


Drowning in the Sea of Anxiety

by Intricate6



Series: Drowning in the Sea of Anxiety [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Fainting, Gen, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 49,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intricate6/pseuds/Intricate6
Summary: Jisung feels like he’s drowning, helplessly sinking. He’s stuck inside of his own head, a slave to his own emotions. Some days are worse than others, but lately he’s been on a slippery slope downhill. He knows that soon he’s going to have to tell someone, but he’s too afraid of the consequences.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for self harm and panic attacks!

The minute that Jisung woke up he knew it was going to be a bad day. As soon as he cracked open his eyes his mind started screaming:  
You’re a failure.  
It’s too much, you can’t handle the stress.  
Dance practice, an interview, and studio work in the afternoon? You’ll never be able to do all that.  
You should just give up now.

But Jisung was used to ignoring the voices in his head, so he just rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom to get dressed. 

Once in the bathroom, Jisung was met with his reflection in the mirror. He looked awful. It wasn’t just just the purplish bags under his eyes, but how thoroughly exhausted he seemed. His skin lacked its normal shine and his eyes were dulled and lifeless. The person looking back at him was someone who’d given up. Someone was tormented day and night by his own doubts, who hadn’t felt much of anything except anxiety in a long time. 

Suddenly, a wave of panic came out of nowhere. His heart started to pound in his chest and his he felt like he couldn’t breathe. Jisung tightly gripped the counter in his shaking hands in a desperate attempt to ground himself. He screwed his eyes shut against the tears that threatened to flow down his face and started to take deep, slow breaths to help calm down. 

A knock sounded on the bathroom door, “Hurry up Jisung,” Seungmin called.

“Coming” Jisung responded, wincing as his voice cracked with emotion. 

Luckily, Seungmin didn’t seem to notice and Jisung was able to slip out of the bathroom without Seungmin seeing his face. 

Still feeling panicky, Jisung sat on his bed and pressed on the cuts on his hips. The wave of pain that accompanied the action helped clear his mind and calm him down. He could finally think again. 

Jisung’d started cutting several years ago when he was still in school. When he was panicking the night before a big test or feeling especially detached from his body it would help him gain a sense of control over how he felt. Those days, though, he only cut in extreme circumstances and the cuts were usually only a centimeter long, just enough to cause him pain. Nowadays, Jisung cut more frequently. More and more often he found himself craving to take the blade and splice open his skin. He gave into the urge more often than not and constantly had open wounds. He was always very careful to clean them out, though. He couldn’t afford an infection on top of everything else. Plus, if his wounds got infected he’d have to tell someone and they’d want to know how he’d gotten a bunch of cuts across his hips and making up a believable story is a lot of work. It was easier just to clean out the open it’s with rubbing alcohol and antibacterial cream every day rather than to risk infection. Also, the pain that was inflicted from cleaning out the cuts with rubbing alcohol kept him from having to draw more lines across his skin later. 

“Breakfast” Woojin called “You all better eat something, we have a busy day today and I really don’t feel like playing ‘catch the fainting idol’ again today”

“That was one time,” Bang Chan muttered as he headed towards the kitchen.

Jisung groaned as he rolled out of bed and ran a hand through his hair. He still felt shaky and...off. Jisung felt strange, like he wasn’t quite all there, almost as if a vital part of him was missing. Despite still not feeling well, Jisung dutifully headed to the kitchen knowing that he had to keep up appearances to prevent his members from learning that he was so mentally screwed up. If they ever found out how often everything came to be too much for Jisung he would surely be kicked out of Stray Kids. 

As Jisung entered the kitchen he plastered on a fake smile and playful ruffled Jeongin’s hair, “How’d you sleep last night?”

“Good” Jeongin responded with his mouth full of food, “What ‘bout you?”

“I slept like a baby” in truth, he’d been up half of the night unable to sleep, tossing and turning in his bed, but no one needed to know that. 

Across the table, Felix scolded Changbin for not eating enough: “One bite does not constitute breakfast, have at least half of it”

Just the very thought of food made Jisung feel nauseous, but today the rest of Stray Kids seemed hellbent on making sure everyone ate a good breakfast. He cautiously sat down next to Minho who was practically sleeping in his food. Suddenly a shriek pierced the quiet air. Minho startled awake and Jisung looked across the table where Hyunjin had mercilessly wrapped himself around Jeongin.

“Hyunjin,” he whined, “it is far too early for this, I just want to eat.”

“You were looking so cute and i just wanted to say good morning”

Jeongin made a half-hearted attempt to wiggle out of Hyunjin’s embrace before finally surrendering to his fate. 

Bang Chan looked at the clock and then shouted: “Hurry up guys, we have to leave for practice in five minutes.”

Everyone, Jisung included, stood up from the table and made their way towards the door, laughing and joking around with each other. 

“Did you eat, Jisung?” a concerned Woojin asked from beside him.

“Of course. Didn’t you see me? I had more than Seungmin.” 

“Okay...” Woojin responded, pacified for the time being, but still unconvinced. However, Jisung did notice how Woojin cast a worried glance over to Seungmin and headed over towards him, presumably to ask how much he’d eaten for breakfast. Jisung felt bad for throwing Seungmin under the bus, but he was more so relieved that no one had called him on his bluff. Jisung climbed into the van and quickly fell asleep despite the fact it couldn’t have been more than a ten minute drive. 

He awoke to Changbin shaking him awake, “Yeah, I’m sure you slept great last night,”

Jisung smiled sheepishly, “Sorry, I just had a song that I really wanted to finish.”

Changbin nodded in understanding, he probably hadn’t slept enough last night either, he was still at the studio when Jisung left. 

In truth, Jisung still felt awful. It always took him a while to calm down after a panic attack and today was no different. Unfortunately, with their busy schedule there was no time for Jisung to fully decompress and as a result he still felt shaky and nauseous. He had a constant feeling of impending doom. He felt like any second the world could end. A wave of dizziness overtook him and he grabbed onto Minho to keep from falling.

“You good?”

“Yeah, just lost my balance for a second there.” 

Minho nodded, too tired to realize something was off. 

Jisung just hoped dancing would help him calm down.

——————————————-

It did—for a little bit at least. Jisung was able to lose himself in the movements, only focus on how his body felt. Then, he stumbled. All of his bad thoughts came rushing back.  
You’re a failure.  
You can’t even do a dance you know by heart.  
Everyone saw your mistake.  
They all hate you.  
You can’t do anything right.

He started to breathe harder. His chest hurt. Jisung knew he couldn’t allow himself to go down this road in front of all of his band mates, so he focused on his breathing. It helped. A little bit. He tried to only focus on the movements and how they felt, the feeling of his clothes on his skin as he moved, how the cuts on his thighs and hips ached, the way his bangs fell into his eyes with every movement of his head.  
You can do it Jisung, just make it through this dance. Just breathe, you’ll be fine. C’mon, you can do it.  
By some miracle Jisung managed to make it through the song without dissolving into a full on panic attack. Once the song ended, the instructor called for a break and Jisung rushed into the hall, “I have to get a drink of water” he managed to huff out before fleeing the room.

“I thought he had water in here?” Minho asked.

Hyunjin shrugged, “Jisung is weird, maybe he forgot about it.”

“Yeah,” Minho said, temporarily distracted by Jeongin’s screeching as Seungmin hugged him from behind.

Meanwhile in the hallway, Jisung had barely made it to the water fountain before the panic totally overwhelmed him. He sank to the ground and wrapped his arms around his legs, burying his head in his knees. Tears started to spill down his cheeks as he struggled to get a full breath of air. Jisung’s whole body began to shake and his chest started to hurt. He felt like he was dying. His body was slowly breaking itself down. It was as if he was drowning in an ocean of anxiety. He couldn’t breathe. In short, Jisung felt awful. It was 10 in the morning and he was already on his second panic attack of the day. 

Slowly—with the help of every breathing and grounding exercise he knew—Jisung regained control of his body. His breathing slowed down and his chest stopped hurting.

“Jisung, are you ready to start again?” Bang Chan peeked his head out the door.

“Yeah, coming!” Jisung quickly replied, standing up and wiping the tears off his face. He was feeling better, but still awful. The panicky feeling was still there and his hands were still shaking like crazy. Nevertheless, Jisung headed back into the practice room plastering a smile on his face. 

The rest of practice actually went fairly well all things considered and things were beginning to look better. Jisung thought the worst of it was over. However, the day had only just started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time ever writing a fan fiction! I hope it turned out okay. It’s unedited because I’m too afraid I’ll hate it if I reread it. This was honestly just me venting and putting my own feelings into a writing and future chapters will hopefully be longer.
> 
> Please tell me if there are any mistakes I need to fix or tags I need to add—I suck at tagging. Feedback is always appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

It was Jisung’s turn to record in the studio with Chan. It wasn’t going very well. 

“Okay, let’s try that again” Chan sighed for the millionth time. Jisung had messed up his rap. Again. They’d been recording for an hour without any good results. Nothing was even close to salvageable. Jisung just couldn’t seem to keep his voice steady. It was always cracking, breaking, going too high, dropping too low, he was failing in every way possible and Chan was beginning to get annoyed.

Jisung started up again, not even two beats in he stumbled over his words. The same words he’d been repeating for almost an hour; the same words that he had written himself. 

Jisung was so annoyed with himself he couldn’t even imagine how Chan felt. Chan probably hated Jisung right now, wanted him out of Stray Kids, thought he was a failure. Jisung certainly would if he was in Chan’s place. Heck, Jisung couldn’t even record one measly line correctly. How did he even get into JYP let alone ever debut?  
You’re dragging the group down.  
You suck at rapping.  
You should just quit now, it’d be better for everyone.  
They all hate you anyway, they’d be better off without you.  
Jisung wanted to cry. The voice inside his head was telling the truth. He was worthless. Even worse, he was talentless, dragging the group down with him. 

Jisung dug his fingers into the still fresh wounds on his hip, trying to distract himself with the pain. He deserved it. He never tried hard enough, would never be good enough. The cuts on his hips were just proof of that. Who else cuts themselves because they are too weak to deal with the pain, too weak to resist the urge? He just needed to accept it, he’s a failure. 

“Hey, Jisung” Chan suddenly spoke softly, “You good? Let’s take a break, get some lunch, we both need it. We can continue this afterwards.”

Jisung mutely nodded and followed Chan out of the recording studio to the JYP Cafeteria. Chan didn’t even seem annoyed with Jisung despite the fact that he had literally accomplished nothing in the past hour when he would usually be done with recording half the song in that time. Jisung was frustrated with himself and didn’t understand why Chan didn’t seem to feel the same way.

On their way to eat lunch Chan even went as far as to joke around with Jisung: “What is black and white and red all over? A newspaper.”

Despite how disappointed and frustrated Jisung felt he found himself laughing at Chan’s stupid joke.

“See I knew I could get you to laugh.” Chan joked, smiling.

Jisung couldn’t help but smile at his leader’s ridiculousness. He knew that Chan had noticed something was wrong, hence his behavior, but Jisung didn’t care. It just felt good to smile. 

“They’re having chicken and rolls today!” Chan exclaimed, his face lighting up as they entered the cafeteria.

“I thought chicken was Woojin’s thing.” Jisung joked.

“I can like chicken too,” Chan pouted standing in line and then piling his plate high with rolls and chicken when it was his turn.

Jisung, who still wasn’t very hungry, only put one roll and piece of chicken on his plate with some salad. He sat across from Chan, looking out the window at the beautiful view. He was still impressed by the new JYP building even though it’d been several months since it’d first opened. 

“Try the chicken.” Chan spoke with his mouth full, “It’s really good.”

To be honest, just the very thought of eating made Jisung want to throw up, but he still took a big bite out of the drumstick to please his leader. The instant the chicken was in his mouth it turned to ash. Jisung couldn’t taste anything. He forced himself to chew and swallow his bite despite desperately wanting to spit it out.

“It’s good,” he responded to Chan’s hopeful look, forcing a smile. 

Luckily just then Woojin came over, his plate laden with chicken, a huge smile on his face. Jeongin and Seungmin trailed behind him each with a tray full of food. 

“How was vocal practice?” Chang asked as they sat down next to him and Jisung.

“It was great!” Woojin exclaimed.

Jeongin rolled his eyes, “Yeah, just great.”

Seungmin wrapped his arms tightly around Jeongin, who made a half hearted attempt to escape from his bear hug, “Jeongin’s just upset because for some reason he seems to think that he completely failed during vocal practice, but he fails to realize that everyone has off days and it’s perfectly normal to have voice cracks.” Seungmin playfully pinched Jeongin’s cheek as he spoke the last part. 

Jeongin batted Seugmin’s hands away, then turned to face Chan and Jisung, “How did your recording go?”

Jisung froze. He didn’t want to answer that question. He’d had just a little more than a few voice cracks and mistakes while they were trying to record. 

“It’s going well, but we still have a lot to go. Jisung is great, but you now how much of a perfectionist I am,” Chan smiled at Jisung.

“Yeah, you really are a perfectionist. I remember one time you made me repeat the same line at least a 100 times because you said it was ‘good, but I could do better’. I swear that day all we recorded was that one line.” Jeongin joked.

Jisung was just sitting there, stunned. Why had Chan said that he’d done well? He was awful. Nothing was good about his rapping; it wasn’t Chan’s perfectionist nature that had kept Jisung repeating himself for the better part of an hour, it was Jisung’s own incapability. Everyone continued to joke on good naturally, but Jisung couldn’t move on from the fact that Chan had lied. All of his thoughts and insecurities continued to swirl around in his head until he felt like he was going to burst.

He was broken out of his thoughts by Woojin pointing to the chicken on his plate, “Are you going to eat that?”

Jisung shook his head and pushed his plate towards Woojin, “No, you go ahead.”

“Thanks,” Woojin muttered, his mouth somehow already full of Jisung’s drumstick.

Chan pointed to the roll still on Jisung’s plate, a questioning look in eyes. Jisung nodded his approval and Chan eagerly added the roll to his plate. Quite honestly, Jisung was grateful that the others were taking his food from his plate; it prevented him from having to throw it away. He was also thankful that no one had noticed that all he ate for lunch was the one bite of chicken Chan forced him to eat. He didn’t need the others worrying about him on top of everything else they had to deal with, especially now that they had such a busy schedule. The last thing he wanted was to become even more of a burden. 

“Are you ready to go back to recording, Jisung?”

“Yeah,” Jisung put his now empty plate away and followed Chan to the studio that they’d left not 30 minutes ago. 

“Let’s start with the chorus this time.” Chan suggested, “I think it’ll be easier to try recording a different part of the song”. 

Jisung nodded his understanding and started to rap.

 

 

Recording was actually going slightly better: “Good,” Chan said, “let’s move on to the last verse.”

Jisung smiled, they were over halfway done! He started the last verse, pouring all of his emotions into the words. He rapped as if he was possesed, completly losing himself in the music.

“That was amazing Jisung!” Chan praised once he finished, “How about we stop there for today? We can finish up this song tomorrow, I want to make a couple changes in the beginning where you were struggling a bit earlier today. I think if I improve the bridge the song will flow better so there’s not such a juxtaposition between the verses and chorus.”

“Sorry for messing up so much this morning,” Jisung apologized, looking down at his hands which were nervously clasped together, “I don’t know what happened, I’m usually so much better.”

“No, don’t worry about it. Everyone has off days. Plus, you finished the song beautifully and helped me realize what was missing. We would’ve had to re record the bridge and first verse anyway. I’m going to go work on that now, are you going back to the dorm?”

“No, I have a song that I need to work on too. See you at the dorm later?”

“Yeah, just make sure to be back before midnight, we’re learning new choreography tomorrow.”

“No problem. See you later,” Jisung said agreeably. He was already feeling tired and if nothing else he could easily work on writing lyrics back at the dorm.

Once they parted ways, Jisung felt surprised by how alive he felt. It’d been too long since he’d felt anything but numb and anxious. He never wanted to stop feeling this way. 

He sat down, grabbed his notebook, and started to write. He wrote like a madman, filling up pages upon pages of verse, his lyrics full of his pent up emotions. He wasn’t trying to write a song, just express his emotions. Later, he’d probably go through his notebook and piece together a song or a couple of verses. Right now, though, he was just writing.

Hours later he looked up at the clock. Crap. It was already 11 and he wanted to get home before Chan so he could eat in peace without worrying about what the older thought. Jisung quickly stood up and stuffed his notebook in his bag before starting the walk home. After pouring out all of emotions into his writing he felt strangely calm and...empty. Jisung somehow felt detached from the rest of the world. 

As he walked home he focused on the feeling of his feet against the sidewalk, the pressure his bag was putting on his shoulders, the way his stomach expanded with every breath. He felt sort of lost, sentimental in a way. It was a hard emotion to put a word to. It’s how you feel at night when you don’t want to go home and feel like walking around forever, experiencing nothing, but somehow everything. It’s how you feel when you’re the last one awake at night and you sit there, just thinking. It’s how you feel when everyone is talking around you, but you can’t focus on their words, only on the sensations of the room. It’s feeling lost, but somehow simultaneously found. It’s both apathy and passion. 

Without even realizing it, Jisung found himself at the door of their dorm. He wanted to walk around for longer, but knew that Chan would be home soon and didn’t particularly feel like having a conversation with anyone right now. 

Jisung walked to the fridge and looked at the food inside. He wasn’t hungry. He closed the fridge and grabbed an apple off the counter. He needed to eat. Jisung took a bite of the apple and almost spit it out. The apple had none of its normal sweetness, instead it tasted like nothing, like chalk in his mouth, but he forced himself to chew and swallow. Jisung somehow managed to finish the rest of the apple, despite the fact that every bite was harder than the last. He threw the core away, disappointed in himself. Sure he’d finished the apple, but that wasn’t nearly enough for dinner and there was no way he could force himself to eat a single bite of anything else. Jisung wanted to scream in frustration. He was so sick and tired of feeling this way, of being a slave to his emotions. Digging his fingers into the cuts on his hip, Jisung hoped that the pain would help, make him snap out of whatever this was. It wasn’t enough, he wanted to feel more, hurt more. He deserved it. 

Jisung grabbed his razor blade he’d hidden in the empty box of mints he had stored underneath the sink and climbed into the shower, carefully holding the small blade between his fingers. He pressed the blade down on his hip, hard, dragging it in a straight line, revelling at the pain it brought. He watched as the blood welled up from the cut and mixed with the scalding hot water running down his legs. The cut was deep. Jisung didn’t care. In a messed up way it made him feel better, pain was what he understood, what he deserved. 

He finished washing his body, deciding to turn the shower freezing cold, suddenly craving the opposite of the burning hot water that was currently coming out of the showerhead. Jisung climbed out of the shower, shivering. He looked down at his hip and suddenly burst into tears as a wave of regret washed over him. He hated himself for what he did to his body, how he couldn’t feel normal. Why couldn’t he be normal? Why did his mind have to betray him in this way? He didn’t want his brain to be so messed up. 

Tears still streaming down his face, Jisung put antibacterial cream and a bandaid over the new cut and similarly tended to the older ones. He put on his comfiest pair of pyjamas and hid his razor blade back under the sink. Feeling slightly calmer, he looked into the mirror. All he saw looking back at him was a failure. The person reflected in the mirror was someone talentless, fat, weak. Their face was red and puffy with tears. Their eyes were dead, emotionless. It was almost enough to make Jisung start crying again, but he heard the door open and knew Chan was finally back from the studio. It was 11:59.

Jisung took several deep, shaky breaths and exited the bathroom, looking slightly more put together. 

Chan was sitting at the kitchen table with Changbin, who he must’ve dragged home with him. They were eating ramen, looking exhausted. They both looked up when they heard the bathroom door open. 

“Do you want some?” Changbin offered.

“Nah, I already ate. I’m going to head to bed now, I’m utterly exhausted.” Jisung answered with a weak smile.

Chan just nodded into his food while Changbin wished him a good night. Jisung quietly snuck into his room, not wanting to wake up the sleeping Hyunjin and Seungmin. They looked so peaceful in their sleep and Jisung wished that he could feel so calm and relaxed. He climbed into his bed and resigned himself to a night of endless tossing and turning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't wait for Stray Kids comeback!! I'm so exited, watch me be up at 2 am listening to it. 
> 
> As always feedback is appreciated and let me know if I should add anything to the tags or add any warnings.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a short, bonus chapter that I wrote after consuming way too much caffeine and sugar, so it doesn't actually advance the plot at all, but I didn't have the heart to just delete a thousand words, so I just posted it.

Someone was screaming. Why the hell was someone screaming this early in the morning? Jisung cracked open his eyes and saw Seungmin being chased by Minho, Seungmin screaming, “Leave me alone! It wasn’t me, I swear!”

“Really? Then who took my phone?” Minho yelled tackling Seungmin.

“They’ve been at it all morning” Hyunjin muttered, his head buried under his pillow, “I’m surprised it took you this long to wake up. I’m pretty sure Minho’s phone is on the bathroom counter, but I don’t feel like getting up to tell him. Plus, this is pretty entertaining.”

“What time is it?” Jisung jumped down from his bed. “I thought we were learning new choreography this morning.”

“We are, but that’s not until 7. It’s 6 o’clock right now.”

Jisung groaned, a little mad for being woken up so unnecessarily early. He grabbed a pair of sweatpants and hoodie and headed into the bathroom to get changed where sure enough he found Minho’s phone sitting on the counter. 

He exited the bathroom where he saw Minho and Seungmin still wrestling on the floor. With a devious smile he held up Minho’s phone, “Minho, I believe I have something of yours.”

Minho looked up and then lunged for Jisung when he saw his phone in Jisung’s hand. Jisung quickly danced backwards and sprinted away from Minho who chased him screaming, “Jisung if you value your life you better give that back!”

Jisung let out a wild laugh as he skidded around a corner, almost falling as his stocking-clad feet slipped dangerously on the tile floor. The bare-footed Minho easily turned the corner and wrapped his arms around Jisung, snatching his phone out of Jisung’s hand. Unfortunately, the combination of Minho’s momentum and the slippery tile caused the pair to go crashing to the floor. Jisung yelped in pain as he landed on his hip, the weight of Minho on top of him making it dig painfully into the ground. 

Hearing his cry, Minho quickly rolled off of him, “You good?” he asked, his voice full of worry.

“Yeah, just landed on my hip really hard.” Jisung responded, rolling onto his back.

“Well in that case…” Minho started to mercilessly tickle the younger. 

“No...hey...stop…” Jisung writhed around on the floor unable to defend himself. Suddenly, Minho was ripped off of him and Jisung was finally able to breathe. He looked over and saw Felix tickling Minho. Glad that the tables had turned, he quickly joined in. 

“Yes, revenge!” Seungmin exclaimed before also joining in on the torture of the older. 

“I...surrender,” Minho panted out between laughs. They all stopped tickling him and laid on the floor laughing together. 

Jisung actually felt happy. He had forgotten how fun it was just to mess around with his fellow members. For the first time in a while, Jisung forgot about all of his worries. He didn’t think about their preparations for their comeback in a month and a half or how busy they’d be with KCON Thailand and filming their music videos. It was just him and his friends joking around and having fun. 

Chan walked into the room. A fond smile graced his face when he saw them laughing on the ground, “What’d I miss?”

“Minho thought I stole his phone, so he was chasing me, but it turns out Jisung had it so he chased him, then they fell, and Minho started tickling Jisung, but Felix started tickling him, and then I saw them and joined in.” Seungmin explained in one long breath.

“Okay, that made no sense at all, but are you guys ready for breakfast?”

“We already ate,” they all chorused.

“Wait,” Woojin shouted, “Felix and Jisung definitely did not eat, they both just woke up.”

“I’m on a diet. I need to lose some weight.” Felix protested.

“And I’m not hungry,” Jisung explained.

“No and no,” Chan said, “You both need your energy for dance practice today. If nothing else, eat a couple of strawberries and a yogurt.”

Looking like scolded children, Jisung and Felix walked to the kitchen and glared at Woojin who just handed them their breakfast and smiled apologetically. When Felix sat down next to Changbin he wrapped his arms around the younger boy, “You don’t need to lose wait, you’re perfect just the way you are, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.”

Felix laughed, “I’m sure they would be terrified, I mean you’re such a large foe.” 

“Hey! That wasn’t nice! I’ll have you know I can be quite terrifying when I want to be and hey--where are you going? You still haven't finished your yogurt.”

Felix slumped down in his chair, sad that he’d been caught trying to throw away his half-empty yogurt.

“It’s just payback for yesterday when you made me finish my breakfast, but seriously who told you that you need to lose weight?”

Tears started to well out of Felix’s eyes and he hastily wiped them away, “I read some online comments and they said how I was starting to look fat and how I didn’t belong in Stray Kids and-” he choked on the tears now freely streaming down his face.

“That’s complete bullshit!” Jisung exclaimed.

“L-languge,” Felix choked out.

“What? It is! Stray Kids wouldn’t be the same without your amazingly deep voice, beautiful freckles, and Australian accent that is way better than Chan’s. He’s been in Korea too long and it’s mellowed out. Not to mention the fact that your dancing is a thousand times better than mine. I can’t pick up the new choreo nearly as fast as you can.”

“Yeah,” Changbin agreed, “What would we do without someone to teach us all of the new Fortnite dances?” 

Felix cracked a faint smile at that.

Chan burst in the room, “Did I hear someone say that my Felix wasn’t good enough?” he started to speak in English, purposely making his Australian accent stronger: “Mate, I’d be lost without you. There’d be no one to understand my slang!” 

Felix laughed, “You sound ridiculous,” 

“Yeah, but it made you smile.” Chan looked at the clock on the stove, “Wait, we need to leave now!” 

Jisung quickly shoveled the rest of his breakfast into his mouth, proud of himself for finishing the meal. 

“Where on Earth are Jeongin and Hyunjin? We’re going to be late!” Chan exclaimed.

“Bang Chan we have 20 minutes.” Woojin scolded, “It takes us like 10 minutes to get there. It’s okay to be on time and not 10 minutes early for once. The world’s not going to end, I promise.”

“I’ll go find them,” Jisung offered. He had a feeling that he knew where the pair was. 

Jisung entered the room that he shared with Hyunjin and Seungmin and saw that his theory was correct. Hyunjin and Jeongin were sleeping curled together on Hynunjin’s bed; they looked so peaceful that Jisung was loathe to wake them up, but his fear of Chan was greater. 

“Hey guys, it’s time to wake up,” he said jumping on top of them. 

“Ugh, just five more minutes,” Hyunjin muttered, still half asleep.

“Okay, but I’ll just have you know that practice starts in oh, 17 minutes and you know how Chan gets.”

“Dang it,” Jeongin fell off the bed in his hurry to get up, “I meant to wake you up, not fall asleep with you! Chan is going to kill us!”

“No, Chan is going to kill me, he could never hurt a hair on your head.” Hyunjin was suddenly a lot more awake. 

Jisung laughed at their franticness as they sprinted out of the room. Woojin handed them each an apple, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

They nodded as they ran outside to beg for Chan’s forgiveness who quickly forgave the duo. He was a sucker for Jeongin’s puppy eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LOVE STRAY KIDS NEW ALBUM SO MUCH!!! MY FAVORITE SONG IS N/S! ALSO MONO AND MONSTA X'S NEW ALBUM!! MOONCHILD AND TOKYO ARE THE BEST!
> 
> I don't know if I'm going to be able to update on Sunday because I have a ton of school stuff this week and homecoming this weekend, but we'll see.
> 
> As always feedback is appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

Jisung carefully watched the choreographer as he walked them through the beginning moves of “My Side”, but when it was their turn to dance, his body felt uncoordinated and out of place. He just couldn’t seem to step in time with the others and was constantly off; always a half beat behind. For some reason Jisung just couldn’t seem to focus today. It took a monumental effort just to try and pay attention to the choreographer’s words, let alone mimic his actions and stay in time. 

“Jisung, pay attention. You need to get this right.” Minho hissed at the younger who had drifted off into his own world again. Minho was dancing perfectly today, as always. He was exactly on time and never forgot the moves, despite only just learning them. Jisung wished that he could move his body as fluidly and effortlessly as the older who frequently scolded him for not dancing well enough. 

The music started and Jisung’s mind went blank. He shook his head and tried to think of the moves that had been taught to him only seconds ago. He managed to stumble through the beginning part of the song, barely getting to his position in time. The music stopped and the choreographer sighed: “I’ll go over the moves again, since some people apparently can’t remember them.”

Jisung felt his cheeks start to heat up in embarrassment as he forced himself to concentrate on the dance that was being demonstrated yet again.

He did his best to memorize the moves, trying to focus on how they fit together with the beat. As practice went on his dancing began to slowly improve, but it was still lacking in comparison with the others.

“One and, two and, three and, four and,” The choreographer counted out loud, trying to keep them in time. The dance fell apart anyway. Jisung forgot the counts and stepped out too early causing Chan and Jeongin similarly mess up the timing.

“No, Jisung. You step out on the and of three, not the four. From the top!” the choreographer criticized Jisung for the umpteenth time. 

The others glared at Jisung as they moved back to their starting positions. They’d now been practicing for over three hours and Jisung was still making major mistakes and forgetting sections of the dance. 

“Come on guys, we can do this!” Chan cheered them on as the music started to play. This time Jisung was determined not to mess up. ‘Step and, two and, step and, four and’ he thought in his head, trying to keep on time. ‘Kick, step, jump, step, step,’ He was halfway done, he could do this. Jisung just kept focusing as hard as he could on his dancing, and making sure he got the timing correct. He could do this, he knew he could, he couldn’t let his members down, not when they’d all been working so hard. Jisung spun his arm and moved in line with everyone else. The music stopped. The song was over. He had done it.

“Good job,” the choreographer praised, “We still have a lot of work to do, but for right now let’s take a break. You all look exhausted.”

They nodded in agreement and walked over to their water bottles. Jisung slumped against the wall, quickly draining his water bottle. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until the choreographer had mentioned it, but now he could feel the tightness and achiness of his tired muscles and he struggled to stay upright. 

Jisung lifted the water bottle up to his mouth, and then looked at it confused when no more water came out. “Oh, it’s empty, when did that happen?” he muttered quietly to himself. He carefully stood up, using the wall for support, and walked over to fill up his water bottle. His head felt sort of cloudy, the world was kind of dulled and muted.

“Hey, Jisung, are you okay?” Chan asked worriedly, “Your hands are shaking.”

“Oh,” he looked down at his hands which were in fact shaking as they tightly clasped the empty water bottle, “I guess they are shaking, huh.”

Jisung felt kind of funny and strange, like he was separated from his body. Somehow he was inexplicably stuck in his head, only dimly aware of his surroundings. He could almost convince himself that his body didn’t exist. 

“Hey,” Felix was suddenly right next to him, taking the water bottle from his hands, “I’ll fill this up you go sit down.”

Jisung mutely nodded and sat back down against the wall. He looked at his hands, carefully moved his fingers one by one. It felt strange. Jisung let his head lean back against the wall. He traced the seam on his pants. 

Suddenly, Felix was handing him a full water bottle with a smile. How did he fill it up and come back so quickly? Jisung must’ve looked confused because soon Hyunjin was sitting down next to him, opening his water for him and putting in back in his hand. Jisung took a sip. It was cold. He set down his water and looked at his hands again. They were still shaking. 

“Hey man, are you feeling okay?” Hyunjin asked.

“Yeah,” Jisung forced himself to look Hyunjin in the eye, “why?” the words felt strange coming out of his mouth, as if he wasn’t the one who was saying them. 

“I don’t know,” Hyunjin scratched his head, “You just seem a little out of it today.”

“Oh,” Jisung rapidly blinked as if that would help him clear his head, “I guess I’m just a little tired.”

Hyunjin nodded, “Yeah, you guys got back late last night.”

It was more than just being tired, though. Jisung’s head felt foggy and his feelings were sort of muted in an indescribable way. He couldn’t tell what exactly he was feeling. Maybe he just felt nothing. Is that even possible? Can you be completely devoid of feelings? 

Jisung studied his hands again, traced the lines on his palm. He was stuck in his own world, separated from everyone else by an invisible barrier. He absentmindedly pressed on his hip. Red hot pain coursed through his body. Suddenly, he could feel again, see the world again. He was back in his body instead of stuck inside his own head. He pressed harder on the fresh wounds and relished the feeling as the pain grounded him, kept him tethered to Earth. He felt alive, alert. 

“Ready guys? Let’s start again from the beginning.”

Hyunjin gave Jisung a hand up. Despite the tiredness in his legs, he felt ready to continue dancing.

“Better, Jisung.” the choreographer praised, “You guys are picking up this dance quickly, I’m proud of you. Let’s run the chorus a few more times.” 

Jisung smiled to himself, everyone looked exhausted, but they were still trying their hardest and improving. He had finally figured out a way to help him focus, even if it wasn’t the healthiest of grounding strategies. The pain in his hip helped him ignore the aching of his legs and arms as his quickly moved formations. 

They ran through the full dance a couple more times before it was time for a lunch break. Afterwards they would be working on “I am YOU”. Jisung had to hold back a groan at the news, that song was hard. Dancing it was just as exhausting as running a marathon. 

He followed the others up to the cafeteria, casually conversing with Minho on the way.

“Are you feeling better?” Minho asked him.

“Feeling better?” 

“You just seemed out of it this morning. Usually you’re much better at focusing and staying on time.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jisung looked at the ground, “I was just tired this morning, but I felt better after the break.”

“You shouldn’t stay up so late, you need to be able to concentrate and get the dance right. You kept messing up today” Minho scolded.

“I know, I’ll try to go to bed earlier in the future and do better in practice,” Jisung muttered playing with the hem of his shirt. 

The thing was sleep wasn’t exactly the problem for Jisung. Sure, he could never fall asleep before one or two in the morning, and despite his hardest efforts Jisung oftentimes woke up in the middle of the night exhausted, unable to doze off once more, but Jisung was used to functioning on only a few hours of sleep. The real problem was how he felt as if the world wasn’t real, as if he wasn’t quite in it. He was only an outsider to life, looking through a foggy window, pretending as if he was on the other side of the wall like everyone else. Some days, like today, were harder. The window was even more clouded. It took ten times more effort to pay attention to the people on the other side, and Jisung was starting to get tired of feeling this way. All he wanted to do was open the window and climb outside of his head into freedom, but he was stuck. Stuck inside the prison of his own messed up mind. 

He didn’t tell Minho any of this, of course. Jisung didn’t want to bother the others with all of his problems, they had enough of his own. Plus, he could figure this out on his own, he didn’t need anyone else’s help, didn’t want to burden them, drag them done with him. He could deal with this on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week was crazy, everything seemed to happen all at once. Hopefully next week's chapter will be better and longer than this one.


	5. Chapter 5

Jisung trailed behind the others as they got their lunch; he didn’t want them to notice how little food he was putting on his plate. He just wasn’t hungry. He’d eat later, just not right now. Later he would crave the sweetness of ice cream and the saltiness of ramen. Right now, though, the very thought of putting food in his mouth was utterly repulsive. Plus, he’d eaten breakfast so he didn’t need to eat lunch, right? Skipping one meal didn’t really matter in the long run, Jisung could always just make up for it by eating enough for dinner tonight. Sure, it wasn’t the most healthy thing to do to his body, but Jisung didn’t really care. It would all be fine in the long run. He didn’t really deserve to eat anyway. He’d messed up so much during dance practice, slowed everyone down. He was dragging his members down with him, it was best for everyone if Jisung missed a meal. At least that’s what Jisung told himself.

In reality, Jisung knew that he wasn’t going to be hungry for dinner tonight either, just like he wasn’t hungry for dinner last night. He never felt hungry nowadays. Nothing ever seemed appetizing, food just turned into tasteless mush in his mouth. It didn’t help that Jisung was hyper-aware of every single calorie he consumed, always keeping a count in his head. He was constantly afraid of gaining weight, of looking too fat, of people beginning to hate him. So he starved himself. Although, is it really starving yourself when you never feel hungry? To starve means to die from hunger, but Jisung never felt hungry. He was strong. The shakiness of his limbs, the way that they constantly ached just proved it. He wasn’t about to let a stupid little thing like nutrition rule his life, his goal was to live on as little food as possible. He was strong, he could overcome himself. 

That is why he lagged behind the others while they were getting lunch and spread around what little food he did put on his plate in an attempt to seem like he was consuming more than he actually was. Jisung was a master in deception. When he sat down, he strategically placed himself as far from Woojin as possible, instead sitting between Felix and Hyunjin. After Felix’s admission this morning, everyone would be watching what he ate like a hawk and would hopefully ignore Jisung, who was sitting right next to him. Hyunjin, on the other hand, was always incredibly hungry after dance practice and wouldn’t think twice before consuming any food Jisung dumped on his plate.

“Did everyone feel good during practice today? No injuries or anything that hurts?” Chan asked. After Minho had injured himself a couple months ago, he was as vigilant as ever, and always made sure that he was informed of every ache and pain. 

Everyone at the table shook their head, “I’m pretty sure everyone felt good today, Chan” Changbin said.

Chan vigorously nodded his head, causing Jeongin to snort in laughter. In response Chan comically shoved an obscene amount of food into his mouth, trying to get an even bigger reaction out of the younger. When Jeongin laughed so hard that his juice came spewing out of his nose, everyone at the table couldn’t help but join in.

Jisung smiled quietly to himself as everyone broke into quiet conversations among themselves, talking about the new dance, or Jeongin’s cute laughter. Jisung felt happy for his members, they seemed to be really enjoying themselves. He felt happy too, but somehow disconnected from the others. He didn’t really mind feeling like an outsider, though, it was just worth it to see everyone else so happy. 

Jisung carefully played with his food, moving it around on his plate with his chopsticks, piling it up, making it seem like he had actually taken a couple a bites. When Seungmin hugged Jeongin from behind, causing the younger to yell at him and push him away in mock anger, Jisung used the opportunity to discreetly slip some of his food onto Hyunjin’s plate. The dancer didn’t seem to notice the additional food on his plate and easily ate it all. 

Meanwhile, Changbin pestered Felix to eat more, “Don’t lie to me, I know that you’ve only had three bites. Eat three more bites of your noodles and a couple more grapes and then we’ll talk.”

“Don’t treat me like a child,” Felix mumbled as popped another grape into his mouth angrily. 

“I’ll let you pick the movie tonight,” Changbin whispered conspiratorially into his ear.

Felix instantly perked up, “You should’ve started with that.”

“Wait, hold on, it’s not your night to pick anyway, Changbin, you can’t just give it away,” Jisung pretended to be offended, “It is my night though, and I’d be more than happy to let Felix pick the movie.” Jisung playfully bowed to Felix, “You are, of course, welcome for this great favor that I’m granting you, I don’t give away my movie nights lightly, you know.”

Seungmin rolled his eyes at Jisung’s ridiculousness, “You literally let Minho pick the movie for you last week too.”

“Hey,” Jisung stood up and playfully swatted at Seungmin, who was sitting on the other side of the table and easily dodged his blow, “Don’t you be giving away my secrets.” Jisung ran around the table, chasing Seungmin and eventually catching him in a hug, which Seungmin tried his hardest to evade. 

In all of the chaos, no one noticed that Jisung hadn’t actually had a single bite of food for lunch and on their way out the door, Jisung discreetly disposed of his still full plate of food before following the others back downstairs to the practice room. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I am YOU” was going well other than the fact that Jisung felt like his legs were going to give out any second. It was an hour and a half into the practice of Stray Kid’s most intense dance and Jisung was definitely feeling the effects of skipping lunch. His legs felt absolutely exhausted. Jisung wouldn’t be surprised if his legs just gave out all together. To be honest, a part of Jisung craved that crash, he wanted to push his body to its limits, watch what happened when he went overboard. Jisung was preparing for a fall and the bigger the better. He almost hoped that everything would go black and he’d never wake up again. He wanted to just see what would happen if he didn’t eat for a couple of days, see how long he could go, what it would feel like as his body ran out of fuel and started to destroy itself for much needed nutrients. Jisung just wanted to go over the edge, fall and never stop. 

He wasn’t going to, though. He couldn’t put the others through that kind of stress. It would be unfair to them, they would blame themselves, wonder what signs they missed, and Jisung didn’t want to do that. Chan was already stressed enough at it was, he didn’t need to worry about Jisung and all of his problems too. Jisung knew how to control himself, knew how to keep himself from falling over the edge into the abyss. Sure, things got shaky sometimes, like now, when Jisung doubted the strength of his limbs, but in the end he always managed to pull through. 

Jisung stumbled as he stood up, body suddenly pitching forward. By some miracle, Jisung managed to take a step forward just in time, halting his fall. He shook his head and resolved to try harder, to push his tired legs to the limit. Running purely on adrenaline, Jisung finished the dance, making every move perfectly in time and more impressive than the last. ‘I am strong. I can do this’ he repeated over and over in his head. When the music came to an end, Jisung doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath. His whole body was shaking with exhaustion, but the others were too tired to notice. 

“Good job!” the choreographer praised, “That was amazing! Take a break, get something to eat and we’ll run that song a few more times before we’re done for today.”

Everyone nodded their understanding, but made no effort to move from their positions with their hands on thier knees.

Jisung let his body fall to the ground and laid on his back, eyes closed, head spinning, chest heaving. He felt awful, but in a good kind of way. He had proved to himself that he didn’t need to eat, that he could dance on empty. He was strong.

“Here,” Woojin handed him a water bottle, “Do you want any snacks?”

Jisung took a long sip from the water bottle and cracked open his eyes, “Nah, I’m good. I never feel like eating right after dancing.”

Woojin nodded and walked off. Jisung wiped away the sweat that was dripping into his eyes and cautiously sat up. The world spun and colors blurred together. He rapidly blinked and the practice room slowly came back into focus. 

“You good?” Chan asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jisung dismissed his leader.

Woojin soon came back, arms laden with snacks, and the rest of Stray Kids was blessfully distracted for a couple of minutes as they eagerly stuffed their faces with food. Jisung took the opportunity to drink some more water and ready himself to continue practice.

All too soon, Hyunjin was heading over to Jisung: “Ready to go?”

Jisung took the proffered hand and Hyunjin hauled him to his feet, but after taking a step, Jisung lost his balance. He grabbed on to Hyunjin to steady himself, masking the motion with a hug. Hyunjin, clueless of the real reason for the hug, smiled at Jisung, “C’mon, we’re almost done.”

Jisung smiled in return and headed to his starting position for “I am YOU”. After the break, he was feeling better and was determined to nail the hard choreography. The song started and Jisung let himself get absorbed by the music. He felt it pounding through his body, the dance flowing out effortlessly. It was all muscle memory by now and Jisung let himself stop thinking, stop worrying, and just feel. 

All too soon the dance was over and Jisung just wanted to keep going despite his exhaustion, to dance until he collapsed. He loved the way he felt when he could lose himself in the music and never wanted to stop feeling that way. So when the choreographer said they were going to run the song two more times before being done for the day, Jisung found himself excited rather than disappointed. He just wanted to not feel anything anymore, escape in the dance. He felt lighter than air, finally free. 

Suddenly, on their last run through, Jisung’s legs gave out for half a second causing him to stumble. The trance was broken. Everything came rushing back at him, his legs ached with a bone-deep tiredness. His head pounded. He couldn’t think straight. His heart rate sped up. His chest hurt. Jisung started to panic.  
‘What if I mess up again?  
What if I fall?  
What if we have to start over because of me?  
What if I faint in front of everyone?  
What if I have a panic attack?’

The song ended and Jisung’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t calm down.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said quickly making an excuse before running out of the room. He needed to get away. He needed to be by himself. He couldn’t deal with anything, it was all too much. He was a failure, an utter and complete failure. He was letting everyone else down, holding them back. They’d be better off without him.

Jisung curled up in a ball in one of the bathroom stalls and tears began to stream down his cheeks. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. It was all too much. He was a failure. A complete failure. Everyone was disappointed in him. He couldn’t do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep saying I will update once a week, but here I am updating twice in the same week again. Don't get used to it; the only reason I was able to write this much this week is because there was a threat to my school earlier this week and my classes were half empty, so the teachers gave us time to work on our homework and other stuff. Luckily, nothing happened and everyone is safe, but it made me realize how messed up of a place our world is. Sometimes you just have to zoom in and focus and the small, good things in life in order to not get too discouraged. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter, I'm actually pretty proud of it and, as always, feedback is appreciated!


	6. Chapter 6

“Hey Jisung, are you all right? You ran out of the room really fast and you look like you haven’t been feeling well all day,” Hyunjin entered the bathroom, worried about Jisung who hadn’t quite seemed like himself the past few days

Jisung forced himself to take several, deep breaths. He needed to pretend to be okay, pretend that his world wasn’t falling apart, pretend that he could breathe, could feel, could be a normal person. Jisung didn’t want anyone to find out about how messed up he really was. No one could make him feel better anyways; it was just better for him to keep everything to himself so no one worried about him. Sometimes Jisung wondered if he’d be better off dead. Then, no one would worry about him anymore, he would finally be at peace. If he was dead he would no longer drag down the team with his awful dancing, no longer disappoint his fans. The world would be a better place without him in it. 

No. He couldn’t think like that. He knew that his members would be heartbroken, blame themselves. He knew that it would be awful of him to encumber them with something like that, so Jisung stood up and unlocked the bathroom stall, plastering a reassuring smile on his face.

“Sorry Hyunjin, I’ve just been feeling really awful today. I’ll be sure to take some vitamin C when I get home so that I don’t get more sick.”

“Yeah, to be honest you look awful. How ‘bout we go home and watch a movie?” Hyunjin wrapped his arm around Jisung’s shoulders and lead him out of the bathroom. Jisung let himself lean into the other’s touch and relax. To be honest, Jisung was completely exhausted on so many levels, both physically and mentally. He just wanted to sleep. Forever.

They met Chan and everyone else in the hallway outside of the practice room, “Everyone is going home right now, no exceptions. We’ve been practicing all day and need a break.” Chan pointedly said, looking at Changbin and Jisung.

Changbin rolled his eyes in response, but otherwise didn’t put up too much of a fight. Jisung, who still felt on edge from his panic attack in the bathroom, was more than happy to comply with his leader’s mandate. He just sleepily nodded and leaned further into Hyunjin’s embrace. Hyunjin was so warm and comfortable. Jisung never wanted to leave from the other’s side. Luckily, Hyunjin was more than happy to comply with Jisung’s wish for skinship and let Jisung put his head on the taller’s shoulder. Minho even threaded his fingers with Jisung’s, holding his free hand. For once, Jisung felt okay and let himself fall asleep curled up in between the two on the car ride home. 

Before he knew it, Jisung found himself at the dorm, sitting at the kitchen table. He felt cloudy. It was hard to think. He was just so dang tired. Wait, how’d he get in the dorm? Jisung furrowed his brow and tried to think, but his brain wasn’t working and he couldn’t remember anything. Did someone carry him? No, that didn’t feel right. 

The table caught Jisung’s eye and distracted him from his train of thought. Jisung stared at the table blankly for a while, tracing the patterns in the wood with his finger. He felt the grooves of the table, every dip and bump in the wood. He lost himself in the action. All he could feel was the table, all he could think about was the table. He wondered where the table had come from, what the tree looked like, how many people were involved with the crafting of the wooden planks, who assembled them, how long it took, where it was shipped from, how long it had sat in the store before they had finally bought it. 

Wait, that’s not what he was thinking of. What was he thinking of? Not the table.   
Oh, right, how he got into the dorm. He must have walked, nothing else makes sense. 

Suddenly, he remembered. He remembered Hyunjin gently shaking him awake and holding his hand as they climbed out of the car. He remembered Chan ruffling his hair as they climbed up the stairs. He remembered Jeongin screaming at Seungmin who was relentlessly chasing the younger, begging for attention. He remembered Woojin holding the door open for him and Minho helping him into the chair where he was now sitting. Where were they now? The kitchen, right, he knew that. They were making dinner. Yes, that’s right. Dinner, eating. Jisung knew what that was. 

The table distracted him again and he couldn’t help but to reach out again and absentmindedly trace along the grains of wood. Jisung was in his own world. He couldn’t think properly, couldn’t process his sensory input properly. He was just so tired. He needed sleep. If he could sleep for forever, that would be bliss.

“Hey, dinner’s ready,” Felix’s deep voice startled him and Jisung blankly looked at him, confused. Dinner. Oh, right, eating. 

The others brought out plates of steaming food and Jisung couldn’t help but wish that he could feel something. He wanted to be able to smell and taste the food so bad. All Jisung wanted was to crave eating again, to feel hungry. Heck, he just wanted to feel something. Anything would be better than this...numbness. Jisung couldn’t feel anything. He felt nothing at all, no happiness, no excitedness, no sadness, no pain. He was trapped inside his own head, sinking, spiralling out of control. He was drowning, his lungs were filling up with water. He couldn’t breathe, desperately calling out for help, but no one heard him. He was stuck. Falling through the dark abyss. Waves just kept coming and crashing over his head; every time he came up for a much needed breath another one came and knocked him off his feet. He was stuck. He couldn’t climb out of the rut he was in, only dig deeper. He was never going to get out of his head. He was hopeless, a numb robot just going through the motions of life. He just wanted to feel something again. Anything. Please.

Someone tapped Jisung on the shoulder and he jumped at the sudden contact. He turned round and saw Chan smiling sadly down at him, “Hyunjin said you weren't feeling well? Will you try to eat some dinner? We’ll just relax tonight, okay?”

Jisung just mutely nodded and forced his lips into what he hoped was a smile. Changbin put some food onto his plate and smiled reassuringly at him. Jisung picked up his chopsticks and stared at the food on his plate. Everyone chattered happily around him, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Minho was laughing with Jeongin and Hyunjin. They looked happy. Jisung wished he could feel that way too, he wanted to laugh along with them, be joyful. Jisung was only sitting across the table from them, but he somehow felt thousands of miles away, like he was in his own universe. He was at the table with them, but somehow not. It was as if he was looking through a window at the world, physically separated from reality. 

On the other side of him, Changbin was coaxing Felix to eat more. The Aussie was looking down at the food with disgust, probably thinking about how many calories were in each bite, about how disgustingly fat he would get with each additional bite. All Jisung wanted was to tell Felix how skinny he actually was, how his body desperately needed the fuel food provided to survive, how much it hurt to see him feel this way, do this to his body, but Jisung couldn’t. He was numbly stuck in his own body. He couldn’t force his mouth to form the words of encouragement. All Jisung could do was sit there, mute, hating himself for not being able to help his member in need. All he had to do was open up his mouth and talk, but when he tried the words just wouldn’t come. 

Jisung turned his focus back to the food on his own plate. He had to eat. Had he even had anything to eat yet today? He had to have. There was the...yogurt! Yes, he’d had yogurt for breakfast, he remembered now. That wasn’t enough, though. He had to eat more, his body needed the fuel after dancing all day. Jisung picked up some food with his chopsticks and brought it to his mouth. The smell was nauseating, but Jisung forced himself to open up his mouth and take a bite. The food turned to ash. He wanted to spit it out, but Jisung slowly forced his jaw up and down, up and down as he chewed the tasteless mush in his mouth. He swallowed and almost gagged once more. One bite was enough, at least he’d tried. 

When Jisung looked up from his plate he saw Chan looking at him sympathetically, “Still not feeling well?”

Jisung shook his head, looking down at his plate in shame, he really needed to try harder.

“Hey, it’s okay. These things happen. Jeongin and I can do the dishes tonight, you just relax and pick out the movie tonight with Felix, if he finishes all of the food on his plate,” Chan spoke the last part of his sentence louder, pointedly looking at the younger.

“Hey, you just can’t volunteer me to do the dishes!” Jeongin protested halfheartedly, already getting up, empty plates in hand.

Felix also protested at Chan’s statement, grumbling down at his plate, “I ate plenty,”

Everyone at the table rolled their eyes and Changbin sighed, lifting up chopsticks laden with food to Felix’s mouth.

“I can feed myself,” Felix grabbed the chopsticks out of Changin’s hand and stuffed the food in his mouth, “Happy?”

“Yes, now do that like five more times and you can pick the movie for tonight.”

Felix groaned something about how he thought he’d already won that privilege at lunch, but continued to eat, finishing all of the food on his plate. “Let’s go Jisung. There better be some really freaking great movies on Netflix.”

Jisung nodded and stood up from his chair. He silently followed Felix to the couch and gingerly sat down. He still felt no better than before; everything was crashing over him and he couldn’t focus. When Felix asked him which movie he wanted to watch, Jisung just mutely nodded in response. It all just took too much effort. Being alive took too much effort. He just wanted to die, go to sleep and never wake up. If only, if only. He couldn’t though, it would inconvenience everyone else too much.

Before he knew it, everyone else was sitting down on the couch next to him. Felix, Changbin, and Seungmin were on the floor, surrounded by blankets and pillows, while everyone else squeezed onto the couch. Chan wrapped his arm around Jisung’s shoulders and Hyunjin sat on the arm of the couch, draping a blanket over the three of them. Jeongin had his head on Chan’s lap and was sprawled Woojin and Minho. Jisung wistfully observed how happy everyone looked as “Thor: Ragnarok” started to play. He desperately wanted to feel happy, wanted to feel included. Instead, he felt like a stranger, an intruder. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t muster up enough emotion to actually do so. 

Hyunjin, noticing his distress, pulled Jisung tighter against him, wrapping the younger in his arms. Jisung let himself relax and focused on the sensation of skin against his own, grounding himself. Soon, he felt his eyelids getting heavier and heavier and Jisung let himself drift off into a deep sleep for the first time in weeks, a part of him secretly hoping that he would never wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this weekend was a lot and I definitely made some not so smart decisions on Friday night, but I somehow didn't puke at all or feel awful in the morning so it could've been worse.
> 
> This upcoming week at school is actually Hell Week for one of my classes, and I have my midterms for another class, so wish me luck!
> 
> As always, feedback is appreciated!


	7. Chapter 7

Jisung woke up the next morning on the floor surrounded by the rest of Stray Kids. It looked as if they had gutted the dorm of every blanket and pillow to create a giant pseudo-bed on the floor of their family room. He was laying between Seungmin and Woojin with Jeongin sprawled across their legs. For once Jisung felt surprisingly calm and content. He wished that he could just lay there forever, curled up next to his members. He never wanted to get up, never wanted to face the responsibility of life. He was going to have to though, eventually. For now, Jisung just closed his eyes and buried himself underneath the nearest blanket.

 

The next time he woke up it was because Changbin was shaking him awake, “C’mon sleepyhead, it’s time to get up for practice,”

Jisung groaned and rolled over. He really didn’t want to get up. It was so warm underneath the blankets, he didn’t want to leave. Jisung just wanted to bury himself and never get up again. His body felt too heavy to move, he didn’t have any energy, he just wanted to stay laying on the floor. 

“Let’s go, we have to leave in like ten minutes,” Changbin offered a hand to Jisung and hauled the younger to his feet. Jisung knew that he should feel a sense of urgency; they had to leave soon. He should be freaking out, running to his room, throwing on clothes, washing his face, and brushing his teeth as fast as humanly possible. But, instead, Jisung didn’t feel much of anything, just hopelessness. He numbly nodded and shuffled off to his room. He felt like a zombie. How was it even possible for a person to feel so dead inside?

Jisung stared at his wardrobe. ‘What should I wear today? A sweatshirt? Jeans? Sweatpants?’ He didn’t know. Nothing quite seemed right. He ran his hands over his shirts looking for the softest one. Why was he so damn tired? He’d slept for longer last night than he had in awhile. He didn’t understand why he felt exhausted all the way to his bones. It was so hard to focus, so hard to think. Jisung just wanted to go back to sleep.

“Hey man, you good?” Jisung hadn’t even realized that Hyunjin had entered the room, “We have to leave in five minutes, okay?”

Jisung mutely nodded and grabbed the first shirt and pants he saw before walking into the bathroom to change. ‘Okay, Jisung. Just focus. You can do this. You need to be quick. Five minutes’. Jisung ended up being not nearly as fast as he wanted to be. Halfway through getting dressed he just sat down on the floor of the bathroom and traced the grout in between the tile. His mind was so far away. It was too hard to get his tired brain to focus, to be in the moment. He just kept drifting away. Instead of getting dressed, Jisung just sat on the cold tile floor and contemplated life.

What even was the purpose of living? What was the purpose of anything? Why try if you’re going to die one day anyway? Does anything even matter in the end? What if he died? What would happen? Is there a heaven? A hell? Would anyone even care if he died? Wouldn’t it just be better that way? It would be so peaceful if he was dead, he could finally sleep, finally be at peace, finally have no worries.

Jisung suddenly snapped back to reality. Right. He needed to get dressed. They were leaving soon, really soon. He quickly stood up and finished pulling his sweatshirt over his head. On his way out, Jisung caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked dead inside. His eyes were dull, lifeless, his skin had a greyish cast to it. Jisung quite honestly looked how he felt: like trash.

“Let’s go Jisung! We’re going to leave without you if you don’t hurry up!” Jeongin shouted at Jisung from across the dorm. 

“Coming,” Jisung called out in response, slowly jogging over to the door; leaving without eating breakfast. When he reached where Jeongin was standing, he wrapped the youngest in a big hug, clinging on to him like he was his only lifeline. It felt good to hug someone, to have that human contact. It reminded Jisung that he was alive, that he was standing right there, in his body. It reminded him that he was real. 

Jisung clung to the youngest the whole walk down to the car. He craved that sense of touch, that feeling of belonging. Jisung was trying to keep himself present, keep himself alive, keep himself grounded in his body. It was working--well, at least a little bit. Jisung felt less like dying, felt a little more real, but he still didn’t feel quite right. It was as if something inside of him had been drastically altered and he couldn’t figure out how to change it back. Every little sound reverberated through his body, grated on his nerves. He was painfully aware of how loud Woojin’s breathing was, how high pitched Seungmin’s squeal was as Hyunjin tickled him. Every little sound swirled around in Jisung’s head, he couldn’t focus. It was all too much. All of the sounds, even the little noises were annoying him. Every shift of the metal stairs as he took a step made Jiung want to tear at his hair in frustration. He just couldn’t do this anymore. It was all too loud. 

Suddenly, Jisung couldn’t breathe. His chest was too tight. Air wasn’t flowing properly into his lungs. His chest hurt. He was starting to have a panic attack. 

Tears of frustration started to form at the corner of Jisung’s eyes as he realized what was happening. He couldn’t have a panic attack right now, he was in front of all of his members with no way to easily escape. Plus, he’d barely even been up for fifteen minutes. What was wrong with him? He hated being this way.

‘Calm yourself down, you need to be calm. Stop freaking out over nothing. You’re so annoying.’ Jisung thought angrily to himself. It just made everything worse. Jisung clung tighter to Jeongin, trying to hide his now shaking hands. 

“Ow!” Jeongin pulled out of Jisung’s arms, “Don’t hug me so tight.” he stated walking towards the others.

Jeongin wasn’t mad at the older, but Jisung’s panicked mind couldn’t help but take it that way. He couldn’t do anything right. He’d even made Jeongin angry for heaven’s sake. He was a failure.

At this point Jisung had fallen into a full blown panic attack. He felt like he was going to die. He was such a failure. He was worthless. A nobody. He was dragging the team down. Everybody would be better off without him. Tears started to flow freely down Jisung’s face. He was a mess. Any second someone could turn round and see how much of a mess up Jisung was. He needed to control himself, get his emotions in check. 

Jisung tried to take deep breaths, but it was too hard took too much focus. All he wanted to do was curl up in a ball on the ground like the pathetic person he was. Jisung stopped walking. It was too much. He needed to be alone. He needed a break. He couldn’t do this. He was a failure.

The next thing he knew, Jisung was on the ground, curled up in a little ball, unable to control his raging anxiety. He just wanted to die. Everything would be so much simpler that way. If he was dead he couldn’t fail at dancing, fail at rapping, fail at being a supportive member. It would all just be so much better. He would finally be at peace.

“Hey Jisung, you okay?” Minho’s voice sounded worried.

“Y-yeah, I j-just fell,” Jisung managed to choke out, slowly climbing to his feet.

“Mmhm,” Minho sounded unconvinced, but luckily didn’t push the topic and grabbed Jisung’s hand leading him to the waiting van. Once he was inside, Jisung dug his headphones out of his pocket and inserted them into his ears. The music helped. It took the edge off of his anxiety, gave him something to filter out the noises of the world, gave him something to focus on. For the entirety of the ride Jisung didn’t say a word. He just stared out of the window focusing on his breathing, letting the music wash over his body and calm him down. He needed to be at least slightly more put together for practice; not everyone was as clueless as Minho. If he failed to get his act together someone would definitely notice and Jisung was not looking forward to that conversation. ‘Just breathe,’ he told himself, ‘You can do this, just take deep breaths.’

Slowly Jisung’s breathing began to even out and by the time the van stopped Jisung appeared perfectly calm and put together, at least on the outside. On the inside Jisung still felt on edge. It always took him awhile to come down completely from a panic attack and today was no different. Jisung knew he had to seem strong, though. He didn’t want to burden anyone else with his problems, plus what was a few hours of dance practice? Nothing too bad could possibly happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late and really short update. At least it's Sunday somewhere. 
> 
> I know that this chapter is super short and repetitive and awful, but this week was really rough in so many ways. I had so many big tests and midterms and I barely had any free time especially since practice was after school.
> 
> Hopefully the next chapter will be a lot longer and better. Please tell me if you find any mistakes!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! A new chapter? Already?

Jisung felt awful. Completely and utterly awful. Sweat was pouring off of his body, dripping into his eyes, stinging like heck. He was so out of breath that his chest ached from breathing so hard, but no amount of air seemed like enough. Every single beat of the music reverberated through his pounding head, adding to the already horrible headache. Jisung just felt like trash today. They’d only been dancing for 40 minutes, but Jisung was more exhausted than ever.

Despite all of this Jisung’s dancing didn’t actually suffer too much. He had been receiving praise from the choreographer and his members all morning: “Wow Jisung you’ve improved so much from yesterday!” “You never dance a new song this well!” “Good job!” “I told you all you needed was a good night’s sleep!”. The backhanded compliments only made Jisung want to work harder. For once he wanted to do something right, he wanted to prove to everyone that he could dance with energy, with emotion. Jisung just wanted to succeed so badly that he only focused on his dancing and ignored everything else.

Jisung panted heavily and reached up to wipe the sweat off of his face. “My Side” had just ended and he had finally gotten all of the footwork down for the dance break. He felt accomplished and let a smile come over his face. 

“Good job guys, let’s take a quick break before running it through one more time,” the choreographer called out. 

Everyone nodded and headed towards their water bottles on the side of the room. Jisung took a step and stumbled, “Whoa,” he muttered, steadying himself. His vision swam for a second then returned back to normal. ‘I guess I need to drink some more water,’ Jisung thought to himself. To be honest, he didn’t think much of his sudden dizziness. It was common enough after a long dance practice, especially when he was dehydrated. 

“Hey Jisung, catch!” Minho threw a water bottle towards him.

Jisung reached out his arms to grab it, but didn’t seem to react fast enough and the water bottle thumped to the floor. When he picked it back up, Jisung realized that his hands were shaking. That was never good. In general, Jisung didn’t have the most steady hands on earth, but his hands only ever trembled this much when he was either having a panic attack or a blood sugar crash. Judging by the relatively steady beating of his heart, Jisung assumed it was the latter. However, Jisung chose to ignore his symptoms. He’d be fine, this happened all the time. Plus it’s not like anything too bad could possibly happen. He’d just eat some lunch later and be fine. 

With his flippant attitude, Jisung quickly polished off his bottle of water and headed over to his starting position with the others. When he kneeled in his position beside Felix the dancer looked at him with worry, “Are you okay Jisung? Your hands are shaking. Are you sure you shouldn’t take a longer break?”

“I’m fine,” Jisung quickly replied. Too quickly. He saw Felix’s eyes cloud with worry, but luckily the music started before he could alert anyone else of Jisung’s questionable condition. When Jisung jumped up to dance his part, his vision went black for half a second and he stumbled, but smoothly recovered and kept on dancing like nothing happened, ignoring the way Felix glared at him when he kneeled back down. Jisung continued to dance, purposefully not looking at Felix, not wanting to see the worry and disappointment on his face. Jisung was fine, really, he would take a break after this dance.

During Woojin’s part Jisung convinced himself that he meant to go down that quickly. He was definitely in control of his body the whole time, his legs absolutely did not give out on him on the way down. No, that was a purposeful choice on his part. It added more flavor to the dance if he wasn’t perfectly in time with the others. But, Jisung managed to stand back up okay and there was only 2 minutes left of the song. That was nothing, he could power through it for that much longer. He just had to focus. Hand, hand, move the arms, step in time with the others. Pop up, not yet...now! Jisung just focused on the music and ignored the way his legs were starting to shake and ached more and more every time he stood back up. He stood to the side of Chanbin and moved in time with Hunjin, well maybe a tad bit slower. It was hardly noticeable anyway. Then, it was his part and Jisung was grateful for the slight break so that he had time to catch his breath. Too soon it was over, though, and Jisung found himself rushing to his spot, tripping over his feet. Once he was back in the formation everything seemed to go a little smoother, Jisung just needed to concentrate a little harder, put in a little more effort, it’d be fine. The dance was already over halfway done.

During Chan’s part he came crashing down to his knees yet again, messing up at the exact same spot as before. Woojin from beside him gave him a worried glance, “You good?” he mouthed.

“Just slipped,” Jisung mouthed back as he stood up and turned away from the elder. The next part was a little slower and Jisung was able to catch his breath once again as he focused on moving his feet in time. Why was it suddenly so hard to focus? His headache had gotten worse too. There was no time to ponder how he felt, though, and Jisung quickly moved formations once again.

Soon they were on the dance break and the song was almost over. He was practically there he could do this! But, when Jisung jumped up his head felt fuzzy, suddenly he was incredibly hot, sweat began to drip off of him. He was soon back down and then up again. He just needed to focus, just needed to focus. The room began to spin, black dots formed in front of his eyes, and Jisung swayed in place. Jisung suddenly felt unbearably hot. Despite all of this, he continued to dance. Jisung jumped and did a kick, but when he landed his legs collapsed from underneath him. Jisung fell to floor as the darkness finally fully overcame his vision.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He was floating. It was peaceful, quiet, lovely. Jisung was surrounded by clouds, flying through the sky. He could see the birds flying alongside of him, they were multicolored with long, beautiful, shimmery feathers. One suddenly swooped down towards him and knocked Jisung out of the sky. He found himself spiraling down towards the ground.

Jisungs eyes fluttered open. His vision was cloudy. Where was he? Everything was too blurry and he was really confused. What on earth was happening?

“Wha-” he muttered, trying to sit up. 

A hand gently pushed him back down, “Don’t try to sit up just yet.”

Jisung rapidly blinked and the practice room snapped into focus. All of his memories came rushing back. He had been dancing, not feeling the best, probably on the verge of a blood sugar crash and then...crap. He was going to be in so much trouble. So much trouble.

“‘M sorry,” he muttered, “I didn’t mean to-”

“Faint? Scare us all half to death? Well you did,” Jisung winced at Minho’s angry tone.

“Minho, not helping right now,” Chan hissed at the younger. Felix suddenly arrived with an open water bottle, causing all conversation to cease. Hyunjin helped Jisung into a sitting position, still supporting his back just to be safe, and took the water bottle from Felix before handing it to Jisung. To be honest, Jisung was actually feeling better, he was pretty sure that he could stand back up now. He just wanted to return to practice and pretend as if none of this had ever happened.

Unfortunately when Jisung tried to struggle to his feet, eight pairs of hands were suddenly there, pushing him back down, “Just stay there for right now, okay?” the choreographer said, approaching Jisung, “I want you to eat something with protein and drink a Gatorade. We’re going to be done for the rest of the day and I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to tell your manager about this.”

Jisung groaned and leaned back against Hyunjin, “Please, don’t tell the manager. I’m fine, really. I just need a few minutes of rest, then I’ll be ready to go again.”

The choreographer stared down at him with disapproval, “It’s not healthy to be passing out in the middle of practice, you or someone else could’ve been seriously hurt. We need to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, plus it’s company policy to notify the managers of any incidents during practice. I’m going to grab you a Gatorade, I’ll be right back. Don’t let him stand up while I’m gone,” with a sad smile towards Jisung, the choreographer ran off.

Woojin sighed when the choreographer left, “Did you not eat breakfast? I knew I should’ve made you stop when I noticed how pale and shaky you looked during the dance,”

“No he didn’t,” Seungmin answered for Jisung while Felix smiled sadly, “I should’ve made him stop too, I saw how much he was struggling at from the beginning.”

“It’s okay guys, it’s not your fault. I should’ve known better,” Jisung shook his head, “I was just in a rush this morning and I promise in the future I won’t forget to eat breakfast again.” That was a lie. Jisung had no plans to eat any more. He was just going to have to be more careful in the future not to faint in front of everyone. Maybe if he ate an apple or at least a couple of bites in the morning it would give him enough energy to make it through the entirety of practice, then he could skip lunch and dinner. 

“It’s okay Jisung, just please don’t do that again, you really scared us and you’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.” Chan said ruffling the younger’s hair.

“Yeah, because it’s not like you’ve ever fainted during practice, Chan.” Changbin said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

“Hey, that was only once!”

“Twice!” Woojin butted in, “You scared me half to death the second time!”

“They’re so funny,” Felix muttered to Jisung rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness of the older members, “But, seriously, man, if you ever feel like passing out again just tell me or Hyunjin, we can take care of it discreetly. Jeongin already agreed to be our distraction if needed. I understand how you feel, you just need to be more careful in the future when you don’t eat all day.” 

“Wait-how did you know I didn’t eat much yesterday? I was trying to be discrete,” Jisung whispered to his friend.

“I was sitting right next to you, you idiot, of course I noticed. Despite what you think, you suck at pretending to eat.”

Before Jisung could ask the Aussie for more information, the choreographer came back, Gatorade in hand, manager on his heels. Jisung gratefully accepted the cool, sweet drink and prepared himself for the scolding he was about to receive.

“You guys need to be more careful and take care of yourselves. Of course you should be on the slimmer side, but this is ridiculous. There is absolutely no reason to starve yourselves and this is the second time someone has fainted in the past month! I don’t want to have to constantly monitor you guys, but if this goes on, I’m going to have to. I want you guys to go out somewhere for lunch, on me and eat your fill. You have the rest of the day off, no excuses. I don’t want to see a single one of you here, understand? I really worry about you guys sometimes, I just want to keep you all safe and healthy.”

Everyone looked down in shame. They hated it when their manager scolded them, even if it was for their own good. Chan and Jisung felt especially guilty. They didn’t mean to let everyone down like this and they really did need to take better care of themselves.

It was just so hard sometimes, though. The logical part of Jisung’s brain told him that he needed to eat, that he was already plenty skinny, but another part of him felt repulsed every time he put food into his mouth. He hated the feeling as the fattening substance slid down his throat; it repulsed him. Jisung just felt so strong when he didn’t eat. He loved the way his stomach would flatten out and begin to curve inwards, how light he felt, like he was floating instead of walking. Food was energy for your body, but Jisung was stronger than that. Logically, Jisung knew that he needed to eat to survive, but, then again, he didn’t see the problem with dying.

Hyunjin and Changbin helped Jisung up to his feet once he finished the rest of his Gatorade. “Are you feeling better?” Jeongin asked. The youngest had been surprisingly quiet up until now and Jisung could see the worried written in his face. 

“Yeah,” Jisung smiled at the youngest, “I’m sorry for scaring you,”

“It’s okay,” Jeongin wrapped his arms around Jisung, “Just please don’t do it again. I can help you next time.”

Jisung tightly hugged the younger back, making him squeal as he messed up his hair and blew in his ear. “Don’t worry, I won’t let it get it this far again.”

“You better not,” Minho spoke from Jisung’s other side, surprising him, “Don’t be so stupid next time, got it? It’s not good to do that to yourself, but I’m glad you’re okay and i’m sorry for snapping at you earlier.”

“It’s okay,” Jisung replied, “I know that you really do care, even though you sometimes pretend not to,”

Minho scoffed and rolled his eyes, but didn’t rebuke Jisung’s statement.

Jisung was tired, but content when he walked out with the others, following their manager to the cars. He was walking with his arm over Felix’s shoulder, Seungmin on his other side, talking excitedly. For once, Jisung supposed he should actually make an effort and eat lunch. It was the least he could do after causing such a big mess today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have practice in the morning all this week, so I actually have time to write, plus my homework load was a little less today since we had so many tests last week (I may also be procrastinating a little bit). 
> 
> I hope that you guys are all having good weeks and the next update will hopefully be on Sunday.


	9. Chapter 9

       At lunch Jisung felt himself slipping away. Everyone was talking excitedly, screaming across the table at each other, and it was too much for Jisung’s brain to handle. He just needed peace and quiet. Silence.

       Instead he was stuck here, unable to leave, sounds whirling around him. He couldn’t focus. It was becoming too much. Too loud. He was sinking, falling, into his brain, the rest of the world becoming a blur around him. The cacophony of the restaurant mixed with all of the movement and colors around him utterly overwhelmed Jisung. He slowly found himself becoming more and more numb to the surrounding world until he was no longer quite aware of his body. Jisung felt stuck in his seat, glued in place. He couldn’t quite bring himself to move, just sat still, unmoving. He was a statue, cemented in place. All Jisung could focus on was all of the sounds and how it was entirely too _loud_. He just needed to world to shut up. Just for a moment. Please.

      Someone touched Jisung on his shoulder and he flinched internally at the added stimulus. “Hey, are you feeling okay after fainting? You look a little out of it,”

      Jisung slowly looked up at Hyunjin, confused. His brain couldn’t quite process what the dancer had said.

      “You good?” Hyunjin repeated.

      “Oh, yeah,” Jisung spoke slowly, it was hard to get his mouth to form the words, hard to think, “I’m just a little tired.”

      “I bet. You should eat some more, you’ll feel better.”

      Jisung didn’t want to eat, but obediently lifted a small portion of his meal up to his mouth and chewed slowly. It tasted like nothing. It was so hard to force himself to chew and swallow. Everything just took so much effort and it was so extremely loud in the restaurant. Everything needed to be quiet, just for a moment. He couldn’t focus.

      “Eat more than that. Jeez, it’s almost as if you want to faint again,”

      Oh, Jisung hadn’t even realized Minho was paying attention to him. He looked pissed. Jisung felt awful, he was letting Minho down, letting all of Stray Kids down. He was dragging them down, they all hated him. It was his fault that they couldn’t practice for the rest of the day; it was his fault that they were behind. He was a failure and everyone hated him for it. What was wrong with him? Why did he even try? He should just stop, everyone would be better off without him.

      “Jisung!” he startled at the harsh tone in Chan’s voice. It wasn’t often that their leader raised his voice, he must’ve done something really wrong, “We’re not leaving until you finish at least half of the food on your plate.”

     Jisung nodded in understanding, twirling his food around on is plate. He really wasn’t hungry, but he forced himself to bring another bite up to his lips. It tasted just as bland as the last. Everyone was staring at him, though, and Jisung just wanted to get home. He chewed and swallowed another mouthful. When he got home he could be by himself, he could listen to music, he could...cut. With that realization, Jisung took yet another bite. He suddenly craved the feeling of the cold blade splitting his skin open. He craved the sharp pain it would bring, how much more like himself he would feel afterwards. He couldn’t wait to get home and splice open the skin on his hip.

     After that, Jisung quickly finished half of his plate and climbed into the van behind Jeongin. The whole way home, Jisung just sat in the back quietly, staring out the window. He couldn’t stop thinking about how much relief cutting would bring him, how much better it would make him feel. The pain would help, keep all of his worries away, calm him down. Maybe afterwards Jisung would be able to get his life together, be able to function like a normal person, talk to his members, interact with them. Maybe if he could pull his act together he wouldn’t be such a big disappointment anymore.

     Once they reached the dorm, Jisung hurried up the stairs and into the bathroom. He found the razor he’d hidden beneath the sink and put a generous amount of rubbing alcohol on it. Jisung also grabbed the box of bandaids out of the medicine cabinet, it was always better to have them out and ready rather than trying to find them with blood streaming down your leg. With all of his supplies gathered and his blade sanitized, Jisung sat on the cold bathroom counter and prepared to make his first cut. He exhaled and closed his eyes, pressing the blade to the skin of his hip, right over an old scar. Jisung pushed down on the blade, hard, and started to drag it slowly across his skin. The pain made Jsung feel like himself again; it quieted all the voices in his head, brought him back to his body. He lifted up the blade and watched as blood started to well up out of the small cut. Then, Jisung made another, and another.

     When he was done, Jisung’s hip was a bloody mess, the dull blade stained with the crimson liquid. He looked down at the mess he’d made and felt...worse. He still felt as bad as he had when he started. Cutting had only brought seconds of relief. Tears started to stream down Jisung’s face as he staunched the blood with a couple of tissues. He just wanted to feel okay again. He hated being such a mess. He hated himself for feeling his way, for being so helpless. Why couldn’t he just be normal, deal with things like a normal person? Anyone else would be able to deal with the loudness of restaurants, deal with criticism, be able to eat. So why couldn’t he? Maybe he just wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe he just needed to try harder, put more effort into his actions.

      A knock sounded at the door, “Hey, Jisung, you okay? You’ve been in there for a while,”

      Jisung jumped at the sound of Changbin’s voice, “Y-yeah, I’m g-good.” Jisung started to frantically wipe up the blood on his hip, swabbing the cuts with rubbing alcohol, reminding himself that he deserved this, deserved the pain that it brought. He was a failure.

      “Are you sure? You don’t sound too good,” the door handle rattled.

      Jisung panicked, “I-it’s okay, I’ll b-be out in a s-second.” Jisung couldn’t stop the fresh waves of tears that streamed down his face. He could barely see as he cleaned off the small blade in the sink, his hands shaking so bad he dropped it while drying it off with the towel. He heard the sound of Changbin fiddling with the lock and Jisung picked up the blade, trying to find a place to hide it before Changbin entered the bathroom. He was panicking, his hands shaking, heart pounding.

     That’s when Changbin managed to get the door open and entered the bathroom. He stopped when he saw the sight before him. Jisung looked awful. Eyes red, fresh tears streaming down his face, bloody tissues scattered on the counter, hip bleeding, still holding the blade in his shaking hands.

      “Oh, Jisung,” Changbin gasped and ran to the younger, wrapping him in a hug, “It’ll be okay,” he whispered into Jisung’s ear, gently prying the blade out his hands and throwing it away.

      Jisung started to sob, “I’m so s-sorry,”

      “Hey, hey, it’s okay. We’ll figure this out,” Changbin started to clean up the bloody cuts on Jisung’s hips and helped to bandage them.

       Changbin knew that he had to stay calm to properly help the younger, but in truth he was freaking out. He didn’t know what to do. Had Jisung done this before? How long had he been feeling this way? Did this have something to do with why he fainted earlier that morning? Who should he tell? How was he supposed to help Jisung?

      Jisung also didn’t know how to act. Changbin seemed calm enough, but he must hate him. Jisung was probably going to be kicked out of Stray Kids. Changbin was going to tell everyone and they’d all hate him. The thought just made Jisung cry even harder, “P-please don’t tell a-anyone,” he sobbed, “they'll all h-hate me.”

      “Hey, hey, that’s not true. None of us could ever hate you.”

      Jisung didn’t respond. Changbin could tell the younger rapper didn’t believe him. Changbin honestly didn’t know who to tell. Should he even tell anyone else? Wasn’t that Jisung’s choice? For now, Changbin just decided to help the younger to his room and he’d deal with all of this one he made sure Jisung was okay.

      “Let’s go to my room to lay down, sound good?”

      Jisung nodded in response and wiped his eyes with the sleeves of his sweatshirt. He got up and followed Changbin to his room, holding on tightly to the older’s hand.

      They didn’t encounter anyone in the hallway, mostly everyone was playing a board game at the kitchen table. That’s where Changbin had been until Seungmin had mentioned Jisung’s absence and Changbin’d offered to go check up on him. He was glad that he did. Jisung was not. Jisung’d much rather that Changbin’d stayed with the others and never found out about his secret, but right now he was too mentally drained to care. Once he reached Changbin’s bed, he fell asleep, wrapped in the elder's arms.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who just figured out to use rich text instead of html if I actually want my formatting to transfer? 
> 
> Please leave me feedback and tell me if you find any mistakes or if you like this formatting better!


	10. Chapter 10

When Chan entered his room, he definitely didn’t expect to see Jisung and Changbin curled up on Changbin’s bed. Jisung’d been acting weird lately, and Chan expected him to be by himself, not curled up in Changbin’s arms. Chan had been meaning to talk to the younger, he needed to make sure that he was doing okay since fainting earlier this morning. Chan knew exactly how that felt and wanted to give Jisung some tips on what to eat and how to remember to eat to prevent any further incidents. 

Chan didn’t want to disturb the pair, though, and he started to head out of the room, let them have some well deserved peace and quiet. 

“Chan,”

The older turned around when he heard Changbin call his name

“I need to talk to you about something,”

“Yeah?” Chan turned around and watched as Changbin untangled himself from Jisung, somehow managing not to wake up the younger. They headed to Jisung’s empty room and closed the door behind them.

“I’m really worried about Jisung, he hasn’t seemed like himself lately and after what happened today…” Changbin started nervously.

“It’ll be okay, he probably just forgot to eat, you know how hectic this morning was, let’s not jump to any conclusions.” Chan soothed the rapper.

“No, it’s not just that. When I went to check up on him in the bathroom I saw...he was…” Changbin started to cry, “It was so awful Chan, I-I didn’t know what to do and he said not to tell anyone, but I just couldn’t keep this to myself.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Chan pulled the younger into a comforting hug, “just tell me what happened and we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

“He told me not to come in, but I did anyway and there was b-blood all over and h-he had a blade in his h-hand and I didn’t know what to do and…”

“Oh,” Chan didn’t know what to do either. He was the leader, but he had no idea how to best help his member in need, “I’ll talk to Jisung, we’ll figure this out.”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” Changbin muttered, “he’ll be mad.”

“No,” Chan pulled back to look Changbin in the eyes, “I’m glad that you told me, it’s not healthy for you or Jisung to keep this to yourselves. It’ll be okay, we’ll figure this out. We always do.”

Changbin nodded in agreement, “Thanks Chan, I knew you I could trust you. I’m going to go back to Jisung now, make sure he’s still sleeping.”

Chan watched as Changbin left, leaving the door open behind him as he exited the room. Chan sat down on Seungmin’s bed and put his head in his hands. What should he do? What should he do? This was serious, Chan knew that lately Jisung hadn’t been feeling the best, but he thought the younger could figure it out on his own. Apparently he was wrong. Chan needed to do something, but what? It seemed too early to go to the manager, but something needed to be done. Should he confront Jisung with the information he knew, or simply just talk to him and hope he would tell Chan himself? Chan doubted that Jisung would willingly spill his guts to the older, but he didn’t want to break his trust in both Changbin and him by confronting Jisung with his newfound information. 

Chan sighed heavily and rubbed at his head. This was hard, being the leader was hard sometimes and he didn’t always know what was right. For now, he supposed he should just talk to Jisung and monitor the situation to see how it would progress.

With a groan, Chan stood up form Seungmin’s bed and smoothed the soft sheets back out knowing that the younger hated it whenever anyone else laid on his bed. Once the bed was again looking presentable, Chan padded out of the room and headed towards the living room to join the others in playing games. Right now they were playing Jenga, and as Chan entered the room he heard the clatter of wooden bricks hitting the table and the clamor of Minho blaming Hyunjin for bumping into the table, causing the precarious tower of colorful bricks to come tumbling down. A small smile graced the corner of Chan’s lips at the sight, despite all that was happening he could always count on the others to unknowingly cheer him up. He loved every single one of them so much. 

“Chan,” Woojin beckoned when he noticed the leader had entered, “Come join us for the next round!”

“Yeah, so someone other than Minho can lose!” piped Jeongin, eliciting a loud protest from the dancer.

Chan laughed and sat down next to the others, partaking in the revelry.

 

The first thing that Jisung noticed when he opened his eyes was how tired he felt. He’d just taken a several hour nap and received at least 7 hours of sleep last night, but he was still exhausted. A bone-deep tiredness spread itself through his body, all he wanted to do was close his eyes and drift off into to dreamland once again, a place without worries where it was peaceful. Jisung just wanted to sleep forever, close his eyes and never wake up. However, the universe was against him. He was exhausted, but unable to fall back asleep. Jisung would close his eyes, but sleep refused to grace his prone form once again. 

After rolling over for what felt like the thousandth time, Changbin woke up, “Oh hey,” he muttered groggily, “feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” Jisung lied, sitting up and moving towards the edge of the bed.

“Are you sure? You seemed-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Jisung stood up and headed out of Changbin’s room, purposefully ignoring the older’s further attempts to talk to him about feelings or some other crap. Jisung didn’t want to talk, he’d much rather that Changbin just completely forgot about what he saw in the bathroom and never mention it again. Jisung didn’t need the other’s pity, his attempts to sound understanding when in reality he was just judging. Jisung just wanted to be alone, he could figure this out by himself and didn’t want to burden anyone else with his problems. He was fine, he would be fine, it was fine. It was all fine. Perfectly fine. Jisung definitely didn’t feel a pit in his stomach, his heart was definitely not racing. He could totally breathe just fine. His hands weren’t shaking. Not at all. He was  _ fine _ . Just peachy. He wasn’t having a panic attack right now, in front of Changbin. Nope. 

Hot liquid started to stream down Jisung’s face. Oh, he was crying. He needed to stop before someone noticed; Jisung hated seeming weak, hated being such a mess. All he wanted was for his brain to shut up, to stop being so annoying. Jisung was so frustrated with himself right now. Why couldn’t he just be normal? Why couldn’t his brain process things like a normal person? Why did he have to constantly feel this way? Why was he such a mess? He hated it, hated himself so much. 

Tears began to stream out of Jisung’s eyes with more frequency. It was starting to become hard for him to keep from sobbing. He was so tired, so frustrated, so done with himself. It was so hard, everything was so hard.

“Hey,” an arm wrapped around Jisung’s shoulders, “Let’s go back to our room, yeah?”

Jisung hiccupped and nodded, obediently following Hyunjin back to their room. He didn’t know where the dancer had come from, but he was grateful for his quiet, understanding presence. Hyunjin wouldn’t judge him, wouldn’t tattle on him to Chan, would just offer silent comfort. He always seemed to know what Jisung needed at the moment, never failed to calm him down. Changbin was a great person, someone Jisung looked up to, but he didn’t often offer hugs to the younger or comfort him as often, usually doting on the others. Changbin didn’t have any experience with Jisung’s sudden changes in mood, sudden bouts of neediness. Hyunjin, on the other hand, shared a room with Jisung. By now he was familiar with how Jisung would randomly wanted to be as close as possible with the other member, how he could go from happy to sad in seconds for seemingly no reason.

Hyunjin simply just lead Jisung to his bed, where they sat down and Jisung curled into the taller’s lap, making himself as small as possible. Jisung fisted his hand in the soft, ribbed material of Hyunjin’s sweater and let the tears flow freely down his cheeks, burying his head in the dancer’s chest. Hyunjin simply wrapped his arms around Jisung and soflty whispered in his ear, “Just take deep breaths, you’ll be okay. Breathe in with me, 1...2…3...4. Good. You’re doing so well,” 

Slowly, Jisungs breathing became steady and his heart rate slowed down. He took a deep, shaky breath and pulled away to look Hyunjin in the eyes, “I-I’m sorry for…” he trailed off, looking down at the bead sheet in embarrassment.

“It’s okay, you didn’t do anything wong. I’m always happy to help, remember, I’m here for you.”

Jisung simply nodded in response, finger tracing the abstract patterns on Hyunjin’s comforter. The bumpy feeling of the stitching beneath his fingers versus the contrast between the different fabrics and colors of the sheets helped Jisung feel more calm, more in his body. He was slowly coming back to himself, grounded by the simple action. 

Jisung sighed and slowly unraveled his body from the ball he had curled up into. Resting, his head on Hyunjin’s shoulder, he closed his eyes and focused on keeping his breathing smooth and steady. 

“Feeling better now?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jisung looked down, moved away from Hyunjin.

“No, hey. It’s okay. I’m always here for you, it’s nothing you have to be ashamed about.” 

Jisung just nodded in response, unbelieving. He felt embarrassed for breaking down in front of his roommate, he didn’t want to cast any of his problems onto others.

Hyunjin, on the other hand, was happy that Jisung had accepted his help. He was worried about the younger who had seemed especially reserved and moody lately, unlike his usual hyper self. Sure, in the past Jisung had always been a little moody, suddenly clinging to his roomates, wanting a comforting hug, but he never cried uncontrollably. He had been acting a little weirdly over the past week.  Lately, Jisung had been spacing out a lot, seeming more detached from reality and everyone else than normal. Especially after finding him crying, alone in the bathroom and then fainting this morning, Hyunjin was starting to worry. He didn’t know how to broach the topic with Jisung, though, so he simply settled for just being there for the rapper. 

“Do you want to go play Jenga with the others? Minho’s been losing really bad and it’s quite funny,” Hyunjin cautiously asked, watching Jisung fiddle with the comforter, lost in his own world.

“Sure,” Jisung muttered, standing up and trudging out of the room. He wasn’t quite sure if being with all of the others would worsen or better his mental state, but he knew that he should socialize, that they would want to talk to him about what happened and hiding away would just worsen their curiosity.  

As he entered the family room and braced himself for the wave of noise that would inevitably wash over him: “Hey! You touched that one, you have to pull it out!” “Get off of me!” “Stop bumping the table!” “Shut up! This is serious stuff and I can’t focus!” 

Jisung just took a deep breath and headed over to the table, Hyunjin right by his side, helping to keep him calm in all of the chaos. When he sat down, all eyes suddenly turned to look at him. Jisung awkwardly looked down at the table. 

“Hurry up Changbin, it’s your turn,” Felix broke the silence by nudging Changbin into action. Jisung sent the Aussie a grateful look and slowly eased himself into the nearest open chair.

The atmosphere rapidly returned back to its normal loudness and Jisung found himself able to relax, surrounded by all of his elated members.

 

All too soon Chan was getting up to make dinner, “Do you want to help me Jisung?”

“Sure,” in reality, Jisung wanted to stay at the table playing games, but he knew that it would be rude to say no and he didn’t want to further disappoint Chan. So, Jisung reluctantly stood up and trailed after Chan to the kitchen.

“You start cutting the vegetables, and I’ll get the lettuce ready for the salad.”

Jisung mutely nodded and moved to grab a cutting board and knife. As he was preparing to make the first cut into a carrot Chan began to speak: “So, how have you been lately?”

“Fine.” Jisung harshly cut the carrot in half, wincing at the resulting sound.

“You sure? You’ve seemed quiet lately. You can tell me anything you know.” Chan looked over at Jisung, clearly worried.

“I’ve just been tired lately, I’ll try to work harder in the future.” Jisung muttered, he felt like such a failure: people were noticing, people were getting worried. He was letting everyone down. He needed to try harder.

“No!” Chan suddenly exclaimed, both of them jumping at his harsh tone, “I mean, you don’t need to work any harder, you already work hard enough, it’s just...I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh,” Jisung focused on chopping up his carrots, purposefully not looking at Chan. He didn’t want to see the worried look on the older’s face, see his pity. Jisung would be fine, there were just a few things he needed to get sorted out. 

“And, um, you know, with fainting today and stuff…” Chan awkwardly ran his hand through his hair. He really wasn’t quite sure how to handle this situation, “I can offer you tips on how to remember to eat if you need, um, I also struggle with that, uh, well you know…”

Jisung relaxed slightly, of course Chan wouldn’t judge him, he knew what it was like to never feel hungry. Jisung doubted Chan even suspected how he was really feeling, how at times his anxiety threatened to swallow him whole, how at times it was so hard to keep his mind in his body, to focus on the moment. No, Chan luckily just believed Jisung was hardworking and forgot to eat. “Yeah, it would be great if you told me those tips,”

“Okay,” Chan sighed in relief. Jisung still hadn’t admitted about his cutting or anything, but this was a step in the right direction, “So, I try to eat on a schedule, set alarms and stuff. It also helps to to just have ready made food or food that is otherwise really easy to make and…”

Jisung tuned out as Chan droned on, nodding his head every once in a while as if he was attentively listening. Instead, Jisung focused on cutting the carrots, and then tomatoes into symmetrical pieces. He watched in fascination as one tomato swirted juice all over the counter when he cut into it. Another tomato looked wrinkled and felt squishy. He threw that one away. 

“...and that’s what helps me the most.” Jisung nodded as Chan finally finished talking. He had no clue what the older was referring to, but it seemed important, so he simply just nodded in agreement. He was grateful that Chan was trying to help by giving him advice, but it wasn’t that Jisung  _ forgot  _ to eat necessarily, he just never quite  _ wanted  _ to. Eating seemed like such a waste of time, such an annoying action. Food made Jisung feel weak, slower, and Jisung never felt hungry anyways. Nothing even tasted good anymore, so why should he even bother trying to consume tasteless mush? Eating overall seemed utterly pointless. Sure, you need to eat to survive, but Jisung didn’t particularly feel like living anymore. Heart failure? Bring it on. 

“Oh! I almost forgot to put in the rice!” Jisung rolled his eyes at Chan’s forgetfulness and moved to help him with the packet of instant rice.

“Are you sure that everything is okay? You can tell me anything. I promise I won’t judge,” Chan repeated while they were waiting for the rice to be done.

“Um, yeah? I’ll promise I’ll talk to you whenever I’m feeling down or something.” That was a lie. Jisung was not planning on confiding in anyone, he could figure things out on his own thank you very much. It was mistake that Changbin found out what he did and Hyunjin saw him cry--he didn’t need anyone else finding out any more of his secrets today.

“Oh, okay, great.” Chan ran his hand through his hair again. He knew Jisung was lying, but he didn’t know how to get him to disclose his feelings without breaking Jisung’s trust in both Chan and Changbin. 

The microwave dinged, signally that the rice, and their conversation, was done. The two quickly finished making dinner in silence. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have 1,000 hits! I'm so happy! Thank you all for reading this and sticking with me, even though sometimes my writing is sub-par!
> 
> This chapter honestly isn't my best work, but it is a little earlier and longer than usual.
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated! I love reading comments!


	11. Chapter 11

Dinner was hell. Everyone watched Jisung like a hawk, carefully cataloging every single bite of food he consumed. It was so annoying, Jisung just wanted to eat his dinner in peace, without the judging looks of everyone at the table. Everytime he shoveled another spoonful into his mouth, Woojin would glance at him approvingly. Jisung knew that his members meant well, but he honestly didn’t want their help; he could figure this out on his own without everyone running interference. 

After Minho leaned over to check how much food was left in his bowl, Jisung looked hopelessly at Felix who was sitting across the table from him, pleading for help. In response, Felix just shook his head smugly as if to say, “What do you want me to do?”. Jisung noticed how the Aussie was using everyone’s distraction to secretly pile food on Changbin’s plate when he wasn’t looking. Felix hadn’t taken more than two bites of his dinner. Instead, he pushed it around on his plate, piling it up it the corner, and creating dents in it as if he’d taken several mouthfuls. “I ate a big snack this afternoon,” he innocently replied when Seungmin commented on his lack of appetite. No one paid attention to the Aussie, instead their focus was honed in on Jisung.

“Wow, could you guys be any more obvious? I don’t need need you all counting how many bites I take,” Jisung muttered sarcastically.

“Well maybe if you could demonstrate to us that you can eat on your own we’d leave you alone, but I seem to remember someone fainting earlier today,” Minho quipped back.

“No one watched Chan like this,” Jisung was starting to get irritated, he didn’t need to be watched over like a little kid.

Chan snorted, “Apparently you weren't paying attention to Changbin and Woojin practically force feeding me at lunch,”

Jisung rolled his eyes and took another bite of his dinner; he wasn’t in the mood to get into a fight. Right now he just wanted to finish the copious amount of food on his plate and head back to his room where he could be alone. He was fed up with human interaction, he simply needed to lay on the soft covers of his bed, plug in his headphones, and lose himself in the music. As long as he could survive a couple more minutes without bursting he’d be fine.

“So,” Woojin started conversationally, “How was everyone’s day?”

“Good!” Jeongin eagerly replied, wanting to help Woojin break up the unnatural tensionin the room, “We played Jenga and Minho lost, like every single time, and then Felix and I watched some music videos together on our beds. It was nice to have the afternoon off.” 

“And I watched a movie on Netflix about this family who just moved to a new town in the countryside and…” Jisung tuned out as Seungmin droned on about whatever stupid movie he had watched. It was getting harder and harder for Jisung to focus, to try and live in the moment. He could feel himself slipping away, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. Every sound was becoming amplified. The clanging of metal chopsticks on plates was almost painful, the crunching of Minho’s chewing unbearable. Across the table someone started to cough and Jisung thought he was going to go insane. All of the noises were swirling around in his head, crescendoing to an almost intolerable level. Jisung craved silence, craved his music, craved the sense of peace and order it would bring to his turbulent mind. It was too loud. He was going to lose his mind, go insane. 

“Excuse me, I just realized there’s something I have to do,” Jisung breathed out in a rush and practically ran to his room in an attempt to flee all of the  _ noise _ . He grabbed his earbuds, but of course the cords were impossibly tangled in a seemingly hopeless knot. With shaking hands Jisung struggled to undo the complexly interlaced cords. After a lot of fumbling, he threw the stupid things down in a bout of frustration and grabbed Hyunjin’s cordless airpods. Hopefully the older wouldn’t mind. Jisung frantically shoved the pods into his ears and exhaled in relief when music finally started to flow through his body. The alleviation from all of the noises of the world was a blessing. Jisung collapsed on his bed and closed his eyes as the soft melody soothed his mind, and he finally felt at peace.

Jisung let himself sink into the music, let the lyrics whisk him away. For once everything felt okay. He didn’t have to worry about their upcoming music video filming, the trip to Thailand for KCON, Changbin knowing his secret, or how everyone seemed to be increasingly worried in his well-being. Jisung could just relax, let himself sail into the clouds, carried far away by the smooth current of the melody, drifting in the boat created by the complex lyrics. The music soothed and repaired his frayed nerves, helped bring him back from the breaking point. 

Unfortunately, all too soon Chan was walking through the doorway, “Hey, Jisung, we need to talk about some stuff.”

_ Crap _ . That was never auspicious, in fact Chan’s tone was downright ominous. Jisung was screwed, utterly and royally screwed. Chan was probably going to chew him out for being irresponsible, disrespectful, a bad influence, and a million other things. Jisung took Hyunjin’s airpods out of his ear and jumped down from his bed. It was better just to get this over with. 

“Yeah? What do you want to talk about?” Jisung tried to make his voice seem as chirpy and innocent as possible in a last ditch attempt to get on Chan’s good side.

Chan sighed and patted the spot next to him on Seungmin’s bed. He was looking forward to this conversation about as much as Jisung was. “So Jisung, I know that these past few weeks have been really hard for you, especially with preparing for another comeback so soon, but I just wanted to remind you that I’m always here for you if you ever need anything. You can talk to me about anything. I promise I won’t judge you, everyone goes through some rough patches in their lifetime and I just want to help you get through this.”

Jisung nodded cautiously, anxiously biting his lower lip. Was he really being so obvious that Chan had noticed? Jisung thought he’d been doing a pretty good job of hiding his emotions and feelings, but apparently not. At least Chan thought this was a recent struggle of Jisung’s, not something the younger had been grappling with since 9th grade. Jisung doubted he would ever get “through this”, but he was grateful for the sentiment.

“We’ve all noticed how you’ve seemed more withdrawn, more on edge lately and, well, we’re here for you.” Chan continued with his speech, “You can always talk me or one of the other older members if you’re having a problem or not feeling the best. We’re all really worried about you, especially after what happened this morning and at dinner tonight and how lately you’ve seemed more distanced and quiet, unlike yourself.” Chan inwardly cringed, he should just stop stalling and get to the point, it was obvious that Jisung wasn’t about to reveal all of his deep, dark feelings and secrets, but Chan needed to address the issue of Jisung’s cutting. “Um, and also, I found this in the bathroom.” 

All of the blood drained out of Jisung’s face as Chan held up his razor blade. He was so screwed, “Oh, uh...that isn’t mine, but I see why you’re so worried, you should probably figure out whose that is, but it’s definitely not mine, you don’t have to worry about me, I’m perfectly fine.” Jisung muddled his words in his rush to defend himself.

Chan sighed and ran his hand through his hair, “Jisung, I know it’s yours. Changbin told me about what happened.”

“Oh,” Jisung realized how utterly screwed he was. Chan was probably going to tell the manager-- he’d be put on hiatus, maybe even kicked out. What would the others think? What would the fans say? Jisung started to panic. Chan probably hated him, was probably judging him so hard right now. Jisung was such a screw up, a failure; he couldn’t do anything right. Panic started to well up in Jisung’s chest and he felt as if his ribs were constricting his lungs, preventing him from taking a full breathe. Jisung started to wheeze as he desperately tried to inhale, his whole body shaking with the movement.

“Jisung, hey, it’ll be okay, just breathe,” Chan was suddenly right next to Jisung, speaking softly in his ear, “I promise that I’m not mad at you or anything, I just want to help you figure this out so that it doesn’t happen again. I really care for you Jisung, and I hate to see you hurting like this, we’ll figure this out together, okay?”

Jisung jerkily nodded his head, his anxiety still running rampant. His hands fisted in his shirt, rubbing the material against the pads of his fingers, tugging nervously on the fabric. He still couldn’t breathe, his chest was too tight, his heart pounding.

“Focus on my breathing, you can do it. In for 4, out for 8.” Chan demonstrated, taking slow, deep breathes. Jisung tried his best to copy the older’s movement, but it was so hard to force his body to cooperate. He was lost in his anxiety, unable to calm down. Jisung tugged more desperately at his shirt: a physical manifestation of the turbulence he felt on the inside. 

“Is it okay for me to touch you?” Chan carefully asked the question, not wanting to make Jisung panic any more than he already was.

The younger nodded in response. He hadn’t realized how much he was craving the soothing touch of someone else until Chan had asked him. When Chan gently wrapped his arms around Jisung’s body, the younger rapper leaned into his leader’s embrace, taking comfort in the calming touch. He used Chan’s steady breathing as a guide and managed to smooth out his choppy breathes, using the Chan’s affectionate hold to ground himself. Jisung focused on how the smooth fabric of Chan’s shirt felt against his cheek, how Chan’s body heat soaked into his skin, how Chan’s hands firmly held Jisung close to his body. Slowly, Jisung’s heart rate slowed down and the awful feeling in his chest began to subside. He pulled away from Chan and shakily exhaled, “Feeling better now?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Jisung wiped away the stray tears on his cheeks that had fallen during his panic attack.

“Of course, I’m always here for you. We still have to talk about your cutting though, don’t think you got off that easy.”

Jisung froze. This was it, he was going to be kicked out, exposed for the weakling he was. Chan was going to scold him, remind him of how inadequate he was, tell him he was a disappointment, a failure. Jisung steeled himself, preparing for the worse. 

“Whenever you feel like cutting you need to tell me, Woojin, or Changbin, okay? You don’t even have to say that you’re feeling that way, just come talk to us, or call us if no one is there. We’ll always be here for you.”

Jisung mutely nodded his understanding. In all honesty, there was no way he was going to admit when he felt like self-harming; the farthest he’d go would be talking to one of his older members about something trivial to distract himself from the urge, but he’d never admit it to the others when he got in that mindset. He was too ashamed, it made him feel too feeble. Plus, they wouldn’t understand, no one ever seemed to understand how Jisung felt. He had seen the look of horror and disgust on Changbin’s face when he entered the bathroom, and the judging look Chan was trying and failing to mask right now. No, Jisung would never discuss his cutting with anyone else if it could be prevented. What the others didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

“Also,” Chan continued, “You’ll have to give me the razor blade you’ve been cutting with.”

“Okay,” Jisung muttered in response. He expected this, and it didn’t bother him too much: it was easy enough to get another blade. 

“Okay,” Chan repeated and stood up, gesturing to the bathroom. Jisung dragged his feet as he walked down the hallway and slowly squatted down in front of the cabinets to feel for his other two blades taped up next to the sink. Changbin had already discarded his other razor blade when he discovered him earlier that day.

Jisung speechlessly handed the blades over to Chan, “Okay,” the older sighed, gathering his wits about him. Seeing the blades made everything seem so much more real. The physical evidence of Jisung’s deeds made Chan fully realize the ramifications of the situation. “Please promise me you won’t cut again, that you’ll talk to someone before it gets that far.”

“I promise.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole fic is honestly me just messing around with how I pace stories lol. My stories are usually really fast-paced, but I'm trying to slow this one down more and focus on more details. Idk if I'm actually doing it successfully, though.
> 
> Also, my English class now has me noticing every single time I or someone else uses a rhetorical strategy or device when writing XD
> 
> As always, feedback is appreciated! I love reading your guys' comments!


	12. Chapter 12

The next couple of days passed in a blur. Jisung settled into an unsteady rhythm of waking up exhausted and unmotivated, dragging himself to practice, choking down enough food to satisfy everyone, failing at dancing, staying late to work on music, going to bed at 3 or 4 in the morning, and repeating the whole schedule the next day in a stream of endless monotony. Sure, they practiced different songs each day, recorded for their new album, but to Jisung it felt utterly tedious and repetitive. He just couldn’t feel  _ anything _ fully: he didn’t get excited anymore when he finished a new song, didn’t enjoy discovering new songs, hanging out with his other members, or playing video games. He felt as if he was trudging through life, merely surviving instead of  _ living _ . It was so tiresome, he was so done with his boring existence, wished for something more, wished that he could feel something other than the pit of anxiety that seemed to dwell constantly in his stomach. Jisung just wanted to smile--to really smile, not the fake one he  would constantly plaster on his face. He just wanted to feel happy. Just for one second. Was that too much to ask for?

Apparently it was, because Jisung continued to spiral downwards into the dark depths of depression and anxiety. No one seemed to notice. They all just seemed happy that Jisung appeared to be eating more and--as far as they knew--wasn’t cutting anymore. In reality, Jisung was secretly sliding his food under the table to be disposed of later, and handing off his food to a wide variety of unsuspecting members. At lunch he would slip his chips to Hyunjin or Jeongin, fruit to Seungmin, dessert to anyone who would take it. This left everyone thinking he had eaten the majority of his meals, when in reality he’d only consumed a couple of bites. 

Food just wasn’t appetizing. It tasted like chalk in his mouth, stuck to his teeth, made him want to puke. It was just better not to eat. Hunger made him stronger, sharper, gave him a sense of control over his feelings and his life. Everytime Jisung ate he felt guilty, hated himself for weighing himself down, for giving in to such human urges. He and Felix were in this together. The pair would often “go out to eat” together, and instead, roam the city for half an hour talking about new music or dances they enjoyed. At mealtimes they would always vouch for each other and distract the others whenever someone started to become suspicious. They were a pair, both starving, but for different reasons. Jisung knew that he couldn’t afford to lose anymore weight, knew that he was skinny enough, but was addicted to hunger, relished in the weakening of his limbs, the shaking of his hands. Felix, on the other hand, hated his body. He saw himself as too big, too fat. He would look in the mirror, pinching and pulling at the fat on his body. Sometimes, Felix’s resolve would break down and he would binge, breaking into the kitchen to cram chips, bread, chocolate, and cookies into his mouth. Afterwards, he would feel guilty and purge, puking his guts up into the toilet, while Jisung soothed him, telling him he wasn’t a failure, that wanting to eat was natural. Jisung hated to see Felix starve himself, see his painfully skinny body as oversized, but he knew that Felix didn’t want help, didn’t want to be told countless times how skinny he already was. No, Jisung understood that Felix needed to come to these conclusions on his own, that what he really needed was Jisung’s love. He didn’t need another person yelling at him, scolding him for not eating more; no, Felix needed someone who would be there for him, someone that wouldn’t judge him. Jisung hoped he could be that person for Felix. Felix tried to help Jisung too. He was the only one who seemed to notice when Jisung was bordering on a panic attack or drifting away from his body. The Aussie would discreetly ask Jisung if he was okay or find an excuse for them to leave the room until Jisung calmed down. While Felix couldn’t entirely understand or relate with what Jisung was going through, he tried his best to support the other, reassure him that he was good enough, that everyone didn’t hate him. 

One day, when Jisung stumbled and fell during practice because of exhaustion and lack of sustenance, Felix was the one who helped him to the bathroom and sat with him on the floor of one of the stalls:

“Hey, just breathe. It’ll be okay,” Felix soothed Jisung who was taking ragged breaths, arms wrapped around his legs, head buried in his knees.

“I-I’m just, i-it’s just s-so _ annoying _ ,” Jisung hated how his body would overreact, blow everything out of proportion. He had gotten a little dizzy during practice and his mind instantly replayed the image of him fainting in front of everyone. It was enough to send him spiralling into a panic attack, his breathing speeding up, chest hurting, heart pounding. Jisung remembered stumbling, tripping over his own feet in his panic, and falling into Felix. The Aussie, luckily didn’t seem to care and offered to help Jisung clean himself up in the bathroom. He had supported the clearly unstable rapper the whole way there, never once commenting on Jisung’s panicked state. As soon as they entered the first stall, Jisung broke down into tears, curling up on the floor. 

_ You’re such a failure, can’t even get through practice without almost fainting. _

_ You should just give up, you can’t do anything right anyways. _

_ Maybe if you would just bloody eat, you wouldn’t be in this mess. _

_ Pull yourself together, you’re such a failure. _

_ I can’t believe how weak you are. _

That’s when Felix crouched down beside him and whispered encouraging words into his ear: “You can do this. You’re so strong for getting through all of this. I’m here for you. You can do this. Just focus on breathing.”

Slowly, with Felix’s help, Jisung began to calm down and the world came back into focus. He took a deep, shaky breath and thanked the Aussie for his help.

“No problem mate, that’s what friends are for. Let’s go grab a Gatorade or something to hold us over until lunch, okay? We both probably need to eat.” Felix helped Jisung to his feet and linked their arms together as they walked over to grab a quick snack before heading back to dance practice. Jisung still wasn’t hungry, but he knew that his body needed fuel. Fainting would be much worse than choking down a couple of bites. Plus, Felix promised to eat as much as Jisung did, and he would take any chance he could get to make Felix eat. Jisung was fine with starving himself, but he hated seeing anyone else act similarly. It pained Jisung to see Felix playing with his food at mealtimes, hiding it under the table, pretending to take bites out of it, claiming that he had already ate. There was nothing Jisung could do to help Felix without seeming like a hypocrite, though, so he took these small chances to make the dancer eat whenever he could. 

The pair headed out of the bathroom, going down the hallway, stopping along the way to grab two Gatorades and a couple of snacks. They both ate slowly, every bite causing Jisung’s stomach to turn. He kept eating, haltingly lifting each piece to his mouth, forcing his jaw to move up and down, chewing the chips into a tasteless mush before finally swallowing the unsavory substance. Jisung only managed to eat half the bag before he discarded the rest. He just couldn’t force himself to eat anymore, each bite had made him want to gag; the chips were too bland, too salty, there were too many of them. It’d be fine, he’d eat more for dinner. 

Felix also only ate half of the bag before throwing the rest away, looking incredibly guilty, “I ate too much,” he muttered, “I’m going to become even more fat, that was at least 200 calories.”

Jisung wrapped Felix in a big hug, “Hey, you did amazing, I’m so proud of you. Seeing you eat makes me feel so happy, and this way you’ll be able to dance with more energy and power.” Jisung was careful to avoid any mention of Felix’s weight, knowing it would just make the situation worse, even if he assured the Aussie that he was already plenty skinny. Jisung knew from experience that telling someone they were already thin enough made them roll their eyes and restrict their caloric intake even more. 

“C’mon let’s head back to practice, they’ll be expecting us.” Jisung and Felix walked together back to the practice room, arms linked in a silent acknowledgment of the other. They were both grateful for each other’s support and help in keeping their problems from the others who would needlessly worry. They were both sure that they could deal with their problems on their own, that they were okay, they didn’t need help. It’d all be fine in the long run.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late and short update. This chapter was meant to be longer and on time, but I forgot that I needed to take notes on 20 pages for my quiz tomorrow, so I didn't have as much time as I thought I would tonight. I'm not sure if I'll be able to update next week because I have a bunch of tests and projects this week.
> 
> Anyways, I hope that you all having a good day and are doing well in school or work!


	13. Chapter 13

Jisung held the blade in his hand looking at the pale, scarred skin on his hip debating whether or not he wanted to cut.

No one was home except for him. He’d tried to call Chan like he promised he would whenever he felt the urge to split his skin open, but the older hadn’t answered, and Jisung didn’t want to bother or worry anyone else by calling them too. He didn’t need to drag everyone else down with him, ruin their day by interrupting it with his depressing, out of control emotions and mental state. Not only that, but it was so hard for Jisung to rely on anyone else for help, for him to admit that something was wrong, that he needed help, that he was in a bad place mentally. It felt so much more comfortable to keep his emotions to himself, to deal with them in his own-- albeit unhealthy--way. To be completely honest, in a way Jisung didn’t understand why everyone was so upset about his cutting. It wasn’t like he was hurting another person, only himself, so why did everyone seem to care so much? It wasn’t their body. Couldn’t they see that this was how Jisung felt better, felt more like himself? Jisung just couldn’t stop cutting, he craved the clarity the pain brought, craved the way his mind would finally go silent. Jisung was an addict and pain was his drug. 

_ I’ll just cut once  _ he promised himself,  _ That couldn’t possibly be too bad.  _ Jisung took the new blade that he’d acquired earlier that day by dismantling one of his shaving razors, and pressed hard into the smooth skin of his hip. He dragged the dull blade across the expanse of his skin slowly, relishing the clarity the pain graced upon his turbulent mind. When Jisung lifted the blade up from his skin, he looked down at his hip in horror, suddenly snapping back to reality. He’d cut deep, really deep, deeper than he ever had.  _ Shit _ . He was so screwed. So extremely and utterly screwed. He frantically grabbed a handful of tissues to help staunch the bleeding. What if he’d cut deep enough to warrant stitches? If a doctor took one look at his wound, they would instantly know that it was self-inflicted, and Jisung never wanted to go down that road. 

He should call someone, just to be safe. Naturally, he wouldn’t tell them what really happened, but Jisung was scared and he didn’t trust his judgment when he felt like this. He didn’t want to accidentally do something else that he would regret later.

With his shaking hands, Jisung fumbled with his phone and dialed Hyunjin’s number. The dancer seemed like the best option: the least likely to ask questions or to pry, but old enough to give decent advice. 

“Please pick up, please pick up,” Jisung chanted desperately into the phone. He heard it ring, and ring, and ring, before the dial tone sounded: “You have reached Hwang Hyunjin, please leave a message-”   

Jisung hung up and sighed in frustration, who was he going to call now? Woojin never answered his phone; Changbin was at the studio working on music and hated being disturbed; Felix probably needed a break from Jisung’s constant problems; Seungmin was filming an ASC episode; Jeongin was too young to properly deal with Jisung’s raging emotions. That left Minho. How would Minho react? Should he call Minho? Would he be fine on his own? Probably not, but Jisung wasn’t sure that he wanted to call the older. It just seemed like too much to bother him and Jisung wasn’t sure that Minho would even answer a phone call from him. Lately the dancer had been ignoring Jisung and always seemed annoyed with him, constantly scolding him for not eating or not taking proper care of himself.

Jisung abruptly sat on the cool tile floor of the bathroom, legs suddenly feeling too weak to support his weight. A sudden wave of panic had overtaken his body and he could feel everything start to fly out of control. His heart beating so fast that he could feel the reverberations throughout his body. His chest ached. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to die. This was going to be it: death by panic attack. He was never going to get better, he would just keep spiraling and spiraling forever. Maybe one day his heart would beat so fast that it’d just stop. Maybe one day he would cut too deep. Maybe one day he’d go to sleep and never wake up. 

Jisung choked on the air entering his lungs and wheezed, feeling as if his throat was closing, as if he couldn’t breathe. He leaned over, resting his head on the hard tile floor, trying to use its coldness to calm himself down. Jisung’s hands were shaking and it was a struggle to keep the the tissues pressed over the still-bleeding cut on his hip. He couldn’t calm down, couldn’t regain control over his racing mind. He needed to call Minho. He couldn’t do this on his own. It was too hard to try and ground himself when his mind got this out of control. Jisung grabbed his phone from where it had fallen on the ground beside his prone body and dialed Minho’s number with shaking hands. He pressed call and instantly started to panic even more. What if Minho didn’t want to talk to him? What if he was doing something important? What was Jisung even going to say to the older?

“Hello?” Jisung jumped a little when he heard Minho’s voice.

“Uh, hey Minho, how are you doing?” Jisung winced, was it even possible to sound any more awkward? 

“Um...not much, I just went out for lunch with a couple of friends, and now I’m just walking around downtown looking at stuff. Why? Is everything okay? You sound a little weird”

“Uh, yeah, everything’s fine,” He winced as his voice cracked, “I’m doing just great, just  _ great _ .” Jisung let out a nervous laugh, cursing himself for his blundering, untactful words. He sure sounded like things were going  _ great _ , “I just wanted to talk to you about...stuff, you know like-”

“Jisung, are you sure that you’re okay? You sound sort of stressed. Have you eaten yet?” Minho was starting to worry, Jisung didn’t usually call him unless he had a good reason.

“Uh, yeah, of course I’ve eaten,” he lied. He’d make sure to eat something for lunch once he was done talking to Minho. He was never hungry in the morning anyway.

“Really? What did you have for lunch? Because I know there is no way you ate breakfast--you were still asleep when I left at 10.”

Wait, what time was it? Jisung looked at phone and softly cursed. It was somehow already 3 in the afternoon. How on Earth did he completely miss lunchtime? “Um...for lunch I had...an apple, and, uh, some yogurt-”

“What kind of yogurt?”

“Um, strawberry?”

Jisung could hear Minho sigh in exasperation, “Really? This morning I seem to remember eating the last one for breakfast,” 

Dang it, Minho had seen right through him, “Oh, um, well, I-” 

“I’m coming home.”

“Wait, no, Minho, you don't need to do that. I’ll go eat right now. I’m fine, you really don’t need to come home right now,” panic was starting to edge into Jisung’s voice as he spoke frantically into the phone, trying to convince Minho that his help was unnecessary. Calling the older was a mistake. Now Minho was going to come home and see what a hopeless mess Jisung was. He was never going to want to talk to him again. Jisung was such a failure, he couldn’t even control his own thoughts and emotions and now he was dragging others down with him, causing Minho to come home early. Jisung choked back a sob as he realized how much of a disappointment, how much of a burden he was. Everything was his fault.

“Hey, Jisung, hey, listen to me. I’ll be home in 15 minutes max. Will you be okay until then?” Minho was speaking quietly, his voice soothing and gentle in an attempt to help calm Jisung down.

“It’s okay Minho, I’ll be okay. I’m fine. Completely fine,” Jisung’s voice broke again as he choked back yet another sob. He was falling, spinning out of control. 

“I can hear you crying, so stop pretending you’re fine because you’re quite obviously not.” Minho scolded, worried about Jisung. The younger rarely cried and ever since he’d fainted a week ago Jisung had seemed different, less like his usual energetic self. Jisung was quieter than usual and was rarely at meals, always claiming that he had already eaten with Felix or just wasn’t hungry. Not only that, but Chan and Changbin had been keeping a closer eye on the younger than usual, constantly checking up on him, asking how he felt, eyeing him suspiciously whenever he spent a long time in the shower or locked the bathroom door. Minho wasn’t stupid, he understood that something was going on with Jisung and this only confirmed it, “I’m getting on the bus right now, only like 10 more minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” Jisung’s voice sounded strained, like it was a struggle for him to speak, “Can you please just keep talking? It helps.”

“Oh, um, yeah. So, uh, today I met my friends at this one small cafe and I had a blueberry scone with…” Minho continued to drone on and Jisung closed his eyes, focusing on the dancer’s voice. It helped to have Minho talking to him; it gave Jisung something to focus on, something to ground himself with. He felt less alone with the older on the phone and it soothed him.

“The next stop is mine, I’ll be home soon,” Minho promised before continuing to detail his day out with his friends. A spike of panic shot through Jisung’s chest at those words. He was still laying on the bathroom floor, clutching a wad of tissues to his hip which was slowly leaking blood. Jisung scrambled to his feet, grabbing the counter to steady himself as a wave of dizziness overtook him--a result of the combination of lying on the floor for so long and not having had anything to eat yet that day. As soon as he had his sense of balance back, Jisung started to clean up his hip. He grabbed the white bottle of rubbing alcohol out from underneath the sink and wet a cotton ball with the cool liquid. Before he preceded, Jisung luckily had the forethought to set the phone down, put Minho on speakerphone and himself on mute--this was going to hurt. As he pressed the soaked piece of cotton to his wound, he mentally prepared himself for the stinging pain that would follow. 

“Holy! Oh fricking heck!” that  _ hurt _ . Finally, after a lot more cursing and hissing in pain, Jisung deemed his hip sufficiently disinfected and started plastering BandAids over the cut. It took three to adequately cover the wound, but it was the best Jisung could do within the time constraints. 

“...just got off the bus, I’ll be there any second now…” Jisung started to clean his blood off the counter and shove bloodied tissues into the trash, making sure to cover them with crumpled up clean ones to hide his lapse in judgement. As he heard the door opening he made a mad sprint for couch, leaping onto it right as Minho entered. 

“Jisung! How are you feeling? What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?” 

“Yeah, I’m feeling better now, I just wasn’t feeling the best earlier, but it’s okay now. I’m really sorry for bothering you.” Jisung looked down at his lap while he talked, not meeting Minho’s eyes, afraid of what he would see reflected back in them. It wasn’t a lie, at least not totally. The adrenaline did help Jisung focus his emotions a little bit more than before, but he still felt shaky, on edge, like the dam he had carefully constructed around his anxiety could break at a moment’s notice.

Then, Jisung felt arms wrapping themselves around his body and he couldn’t help but learn into the older’s calming embrace, “Jisung, you’ll never be a bother. Now, have you eaten yet?”

“No,” the rapper sheepishly admitted, causing Minho to groan in frustration.

“Okay, come on, let’s go to the kitchen and you’re going to tell me exactly what you want to eat for lunch.”

Jisung just nodded his understanding, suddenly way too tired to argue, and trudged after Minho into the kitchen as the dancer started to heat up some rameon, acting like it was an exotic delicacy fit for a king. Minho set the bowl in front of Jisung and then looked him straight in the eyes, suddenly very serious. “You know that I will always be here for you, right? No matter what you can talk to me.” 

“Of course Minho, I’ll always talk to you when I need help,” Jisung parroted back, just wanting to get the older to leave him alone. He was tired of everyone checking up on him and making sure that he was okay. He would be fine on his own. He knew when he did and didn’t need help, as demonstrated by his actions today. He had called someone, eventually.

Regardless, Minho wrapped Jisung in a big hug. However, in the process, the dancer somehow managed to bang Jisung’s hip against the table, causing the younger to cry out in pain as he felt the fresh wound start to bleed once again. 

Minho instantly backed up when he heard Jisung’s cry of pain, assessing what could have caused Jisung’s pained reaction. His eyes settled on Jisung’s hip: “Jisung...what did you do?” Minho’s voice was laced with fear, as if he was afraid of the answer.

Jisung wrinkled his brows in confusion and followed Minho’s gaze down to his hip.  _ Oh _ . Somehow his wound had managed to bleed through the BandAids and now a spot of blood was beginning to form on his jeans.

His mind instantly began to come up with  the worst possible thoughts: He was such a mess. He was so screwed. Minho was going to hate him. Minho was never going to want to speak to him ever again. He was so disgusting, so hopeless. For the second time that day, Jisung’s breathing started to become uneven and desperate as he fell into the clutches of anxiety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is officially the longest thing I have ever written! I was so sure that an update wasn't going to happen today, yet here we are. I honestly just reached a point where I was like, well it's almost done I might as well finish it and post it tonight and like 700 words and forever later, here I am. 
> 
> I'm so proud of Stray Kids for preforming at MAMA and winning Rookie of the Year!! Honestly, everyone did so well and all of the performances were so good this year.
> 
> Thank you to everyone for reading this and leaving kudos and comments! Your comments always make me feel so happy!!


	14. Chapter 14

“J-Jisung, what h-happened to your hip?” Minho’s face was inscribed with terror, not sure if he wanted to know the answer to his question.

Jisung didn’t respond: his mind wasn’t allowing him to. Instead, the younger curled up even further into himself, drowning in the sea of anxiety that was his mind. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swim to the surface; the current just kept slamming him back down ever time he tried. 

Waves were crashing over his head in an endless torrent and he couldn’t manage to get a single breath of air. There was no reprieve from this feeling in his chest. He was going to die; everyone hated him; he was going to get kicked out of the group; Minho hated him. This was it. This was the end. The end of everything he loved. Everyone was going to hate him now, think him too weak for the stress of being an idol. He was going to be kicked out of Stray Kids. This was it. 

Minho watched in horror as Jisung curled up into a ball, tears starting to stream down his face. His breathing was ragged and he was gasping and choking on the air that flowed into his lungs as if he couldn’t properly get a lungful of air.

“Uh, Jisung? Are you okay?” Minho implored, not sure what to do in this situation. He didn’t quite understand what was happening, why Jisung suddenly had this reaction.

Jisung, instead of answering Minho’s question, curled further into himself. He wrapped his arms tighter around his knees in his white-knuckled grip. He was feeling so helpless, so out of control. He didn’t know what to do, how to feel better, how to gain back control over his body. His thoughts were flying around in his head, an unhelpful disorganized mess:  _ I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Minho hates me. I’m a mess. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to die. I’m stuck in my head and I’m never going to get out _ . 

Jisung’s chest hurt, his heart was going 100 miles an hour, he couldn’t breathe,  _ he couldn’t breathe _ . He was going to die. His body was going into overdrive; his heart was going to fail, air was going to stop being able to get into his lungs. He was going to die. 

Minho watched helplessly as his friend’s body began to shake and his sobs became uncontrollable. He didn’t know what to do, how to help Jisung calm down. Minho cautiously rubbed Jisung’s back, “Hey Jisung, everything’s fine, just calm down.” His words didn’t seem to help. Instead, the younger violently flinched away from what Minho’s comforting touch and began to dig his nails into his arms, trying to use pain to ground himself.

“Oh, um...okay,” Minho ran his hand through his hair, unsure on how to proceed. “Okay, Jisung, uh...could you like try to calm down?”

In response to Minho’s question, Jisung started to dig his fingers into the fresh cut on his, hoping the pain that followed would help ground him, help bring him down from his panic attack. It did help a little bit, the pain helped him feel more present in his body, more down to Earth, it helped tie his mind to his body. However, the relief was brief and before he knew it, his hand was suddenly being ripped away from his hip. Jisung looked up and saw Minho looking down at him in horror: “Please never do that again.” the dancer whispered, his voice laced with terror.

“I’m sorry,” Jisung started to cry once more. Now he had done it. Minho was mad at him; he hated him, never wanted to see him ever again.

Sensing Jisung’s distress, Minho knelt by the rapper, careful not to touch him, and soothingly talked to him: “Hey, it’s okay, I’m not mad at you, I’m not disappointed or anything, and I will never leave you. I just want to make sure that you’re okay and don’t hurt yourself any further; so when you calm down, we’re going to go to the bathroom to clean out the wound on your hip, okay? But first, you’re going to need to take some deep breaths with me, got it?” Jisung numbly nodded his understanding. “Okay, so ready? Breathe in, 1...2...3...4,” Minho demonstrated a deep breath and patiently waited for Jisung to copy his action, “Now out for 8, ready?” After repeating the sequence several times, Jisung’s shoulders slowly began to relax, and his breathing became more steady and less desperate. A couple minutes later, Jisung unwound his arms from around his legs and sat up straight. Minho noticed the action and stopped his counting, “Feeling better?”

Jisung simply just nodded in response, not feeling like putting the effort and energy into actually verbalizing his thoughts. 

“Okay then, let’s go to the bathroom to get your hip cleaned up, yeah?” Jisung took Minho’s offered hand and slowly followed him to the bathroom, too mentally drained to protest. 

Sitting on the bathroom counter, Jisung took off the bloody BandAids that were poorly covering his cut, revealing the whole thing to Minho.

“Oh,” Minho inhaled sharply. The cut was  _ deep _ . Minho was pretty sure that it needed stitches and it was obviously not an accident. No, Jisung had to have purposefully carved that line into his skin. He knew Jisung wasn’t in the greatest place mentally, but he hadn’t realized it was this bad. “Jisung, you know you can talk to me any time, right?”

Jisung mutely nodded his understanding, but was internally screaming. Minho knew. He had put two and two together and realized what Jisung had done, had realized that there was something seriously wrong with Jisung. Minho was going to tell someone, Chan, a manager, and Jisung was going to be kicked out of Stray Kids. There were going to send him home, tell him he was too sick and damaged to continue such a high-stress lifestyle. 

“Ow,” Jisung was snapped out of his thought spiral by Minho swabbing his cut out with rubbing alcohol.

“Sorry,” Minho muttered as he slathered on a generous amount of antibacterial cut onto Jisung’s hip, “You know, I’m no doctor, but I think this may need stitches.”

Jisung simply just shrugged in response, “It’ll be fine.”

“Whatever you say.” Minho muttered, putting the biggest Band Aid he could find over Jisung’s hip. “Okay, I’m done now. Why don’t you go change and I’ll put these jeans in the washer.”

“Yeah, and Minho?”

“Yes?”

“Could you please not tell anyone else what happened? It was only just this once, I promise.”

“Of course,” Minho smoothly lied. He’d seen the scars and knew this was definitely not just a one time thing.

“Thank you!” a small smile graced Jisung’s face as he thought that he’d gotten off spot free. 

After the younger finished getting changed, he played games with Minho who was afraid to let Jisung out of his sight after what had happened earlier.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

Later that night, Minho pulled Chan off to the side to talk to him. “Jisung’s been cutting.”

“I know, Changbin told me. I made Jisung promise to call me or Woojin before he cut again.”

“Really? Because he cut again today again. On his hip. It isn’t pretty.” 

Chan cursed softly under his breath, “I saw he’d called me, but my phone was dead at the time. I should’ve brought my charger with me.”

“It’s not your fault, Chan. You can’t control how he feels or how he copes with his emotions.”

“I know, I just-” Chan sadly shook his head, “I just feel like I failed him. I’m supposed to be here for you guys, but I can’t even keep Jisung from harming himself.”

“We need to tell the manager. Jisung won’t admit it, but he needs help. This isn’t healthy.”

“I talk to him after we’re done with the filming for ‘I am YOU’. Jisung would kill me if I told the manager now and it interfered with the music video filming.”

“Okay, I trust you. Jisung’ll be okay. It’s just a rough time right now.”

“Yeah, I sure hope so,” Chan sighed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for another short chapter, this past week was really hectic with finals and stuff. Luckily, we're on break now and I'll hopefully have more time to write. I hope everyone has a good break and Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it!
> 
> Please tell me if there were any mistakes or anything, I'm too tired to proofread it.


	15. Chapter 15

“Hey Jisung, want to sit here next to me?” Woojin patted the couch next to him.

Jisung sighed and dejectedly trudged over to where Woojin was sitting. It was 11 o’clock in the morning, they had just started filming for the “I am YOU” music video, and Jisung was already fed up with his older members. Either Chan, Woojin, or Minho were constantly by his side as if he was a little kid and needed supervision. He knew his members meant well, but it was so annoying. He could go to the bathroom by himself thank you very much.

Not only that, but Jisung had noticed how this morning the contents of the cabinet beneath the sink had been rearranged. Upon further investigation, he’d discovered that his blades and all of the razors in the bathroom were missing. He wasn’t even trusted to shave by himself anymore! No one had any sympathy for him either. When he’d complained to Felix about the razor situation, the Aussie had just shrugged and said, “They care about you, what else should they do? Talking to you about it didn’t work.” After Felix had finished speaking, Jisung had stomped off in frustration. Felix was right, but it wasn’t what Jisung wanted to hear from his friend. He had wanted sympathy, for Felix to agree with him and say how unfair it was. He hated that everyone was getting involved in his business, was trying to help him unnecessarily. Jisung didn’t want help, refused to admit that something was wrong. He was determined that he could figure this out on his own, could deal with his emotions by himself.

So when Jisung finally made his way over to the couch where Woojin was sitting, and the older wrapped him in a big hug saying:. “Wow, you’re really skinny, are you sure you’re eating enough?” Jisung snapped: “Of course I’m eating enough.” he replied, brisling at the question and quickly jumping out of Woojin’s embrace: the once comforting arms feeling suffocating.

The question brought up Jisung’s worst thoughts about his weight: he really wasn’t even that skinny, he could afford to lose at least 5 more pounds. Just look at the way his stomach protruded over the waist of his pants and the way the cheeks were swelled with superfluous baby fat.

    Luckily, before Woojin could question Jisung about the panicked look on his face, they were being called over for their next group shot and Jisung was easily able to ignore the older’s worried glances and just focus on playing his role.

      After the shot, it was time for Woojin’s solo filming and Jisung was grateful that he wasn’t going to have to confront the singer any time soon. Instead, Jisung curled up on the couch and watched the rest of his members having fun.

The concept for the music video was very lively and lighthearted, featuring many shots of Stray Kids having fun and messing around together, but Jisung couldn’t help but feel the opposite of how he was supposed to. Filming music videos was always a very stressful ordeal and today was no different. The filming was scheduled to go all through the night, and just the thought of staying awake and alert for that long was enough for the wave of anxiety to well up in Jisung’s chest.

_There was no way he was going to be able to stay up that long._

_He was going to stumble and fall while dancing._

_He was a failure._

_He couldn’t act._

_He couldn’t dance._

_The filming was going to take way longer than planned because of him._

“Yo man, you ready for the trampoline scene? We’re supposed to head over there now.” Jisung mutely nodded in response and took Hyunjin’s offered hand, flinching at the contact. This was going to suck.

Jisung clambered up onto the trampoline, cringing at how close everyone was laying together. Chan and Jeongin were practically intertwined and everyone was inexplicably on top of Changbin, who was in the middle of the pile. Jisung feared how close he was going to have to lay to everyone, how many sweaty bodies he was going to have to touch. If barely touching Hyunjin’s hand was enough to send him reeling backwards, then how was is going to be when he was laying in between his members, almost every inch of his skin in contact with theirs?

Fortunately, since he and Hyunjin were the last two on the trampoline, they were positioned near the fringes of the pile and Jisung only had a small part of his shoulder pressed against the dancer. That small part, though, was enough to send Jisung’s heart racing as his mind unhelpfully decided to zero in on the miniscule point of contact. He started to sweat even more than he usually would in this heat, and all of his senses became painfully heightened. Every sound scraped against his nerves. Even shift of someone on the trampoline, sent shivers down his spine. The sun became unbearably bright.

Before he knew it, Jisung was waging a full on war against his mind. Every time he winced at the sound of someone’s voice, he would remind himself of how stupid he was being: _Get over it, normal people can deal with people talking. Why are you like this?_

Whenever Hyunjin would shift, setting off another wave of panic in Jisung’s body he would scold himself for being so annoying: _You’re so self-absorbed and high maintenance, you can’t even deal with this for a couple minutes. What a loser._

When the manager asked Jisung a question and he couldn’t even manage a verbal answer, he made sure to remind himself how useless he was: _Wow, you can’t even talk. What are you? A baby? You’re sure acting like one. Just try a little harder; you’re so lazy._

By the end of the scene, Jisung was practically in tears. He was so frustrated, so fed up with himself. He hated his mind so much. Why couldn’t he just be a normal fricking person with a functioning mind? Instead he was stuck in this fat, slow body with a completely useless brain, obsessing over an insignificant, nonexistent problem.

“You feeling okay? You don’t look so hot,” A concerned Hyunjin appeared by Jisung’s side, offering support, “Let’s head over to a quiet spot and you can tell me what’s up.”

Jisung just mutely nodded, still too overwhelmed to actually form the sounds required to speak. As he followed Hyunjin to a quieter section of the rooftop they were on, the dancer began to talk about what was happening at school and other random things to help distract Jisung. It helped a little bit. By the time they were seated in a much quieter section of the roof, Jisung was able to stand the sound of his own voice and answer simple questions without freaking out again.

“Are you good? You seemed a little out of it there,”

Jisung nodded his head and fiddled with his hat, “I just...it was...loud,” Jisung glanced down towards his lap where his fingers were intertwined, “Everything just felt like too much. I...couldn’t quite turn my brain off? Does that make sense?”

Hyunjin slowly nodded his head, looking thoughtful, like he was carefully considering and going over Jisung’s words in his head, “I think I get it. Like your brain couldn’t properly process the sensory input? A boy with autism in my class got something similar, but I think it can also be caused by stress and stuff.”

That made sense, Jisung was certainly stressed with all that was going on lately, especially with the filming for their music video.

“Do you want my headphones? I think it may help, with the noise and stuff.”

Jisung nodded gratefully and accepted the earbuds Hyunjin offered him. When he inserted them into his ears, a flood of music flowed over him and he felt his body start to calm down. The music really quite helped him feel calmer and more put together. It gave him something to focus on, to distract him from the noises surrounding him. It didn’t completely extinguish the anxiety in his chest, but it certainly helped.

“You can keep those if you want. I have an extra pair.”

Jisung smiled at Hyunjin’s kind words and closed his eyes, letting the music completely surround him, soothing and calming his tense body. It was in this manner that Jisung continued through the rest of the filming, inserting the buds into his ears whenever he could, keeping himself as relaxed and amiable as possible. Near the end of the first day, Jisung found himself able to run around with Jeongin and Seungmin and truly enjoy himself for the first time in a while.

By the end of the filming, Jisung was feeling decently well about the music video, and was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t go as awfully as he had originally thought it would. Granted, he had still felt anxious, sometimes even overwhelmingly so, but for the most part he was able to seek out Hyunjin or cuddle with some of his other members to ride out the sudden onset of negative feelings. This period of relative relaxation was not enough to soothe the fears of the oldest Stray Kids members. They still noticed how Jisung was more withdrawn than usual, how he contanly was listening to music, not talking as much as usual. The day after filming ended, the decided to confront the manager with their fears:

“We’re really worried about Jisung,” Chan started out, gathering his courage to start this difficult conversation. “He hasn’t seemed like himself lately.”

Their manager slowly nodded in response, after the fainting episode he had been keeping a closer eye on the rapper and he had noticed how Jisung seemed less energetic than usual. “What do you think I should do? Mental health is a serious issue and it’s best to talk to a doctor about this.”

“He’s never going to willingly go to a doctor.” Minho pointed out, “He’s way too stubborn.”

The manager stroked his chin, thinking. “You know, it’s probably time for all of you guys’ yearly check up. He won’t question it if everyone also has to go.”

“Yes, then Felix can get checked up too,” Woojin added, “I don’t think he’s eating enough, he’s lost quite a bit of weight.”

“Okay, I’ll see how soon I can get all of you guys in.”

  


    

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're just going to say this update isn't late because it's still Sunday in the American Samoa and Baker Island (yes I did Google that). Also, I'm sorry for any typos, this is barely even proofread and there's probably so many mistakes at the end.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you have a Happy New Year and that 2019 is better than your 2018!!


	16. Chapter 16

It was breakfast and Jisung and Felix were playing their usual game: sneaking food under the table, shifting it to other’s plates when they weren’t paying attention, piling it up in little mounds to make it seem like they consumed more than they actually had. They both danced around food as if it was poison, as if consuming it would be the end of the world, would make them bloat up uncontrollably. 

However, they both acted as if they were better than the other, would never take it as far, never go off  _ that _ cliff. Felix acted as if cutting was somehow ten times worse than watching your body waste away as you deprived it of much needed nutrients. Granted, Jisung was doing something similar, but he wasn’t as bad as Felix. He didn’t purge, didn’t want to become skeleton-thin. At least, that’s what he told himself. Jisung would never admit it, but he loved the way he felt when he was starving, loved the concave shape of his stomach, loved how the pounds would just drop off. Maybe it had started out as a simple lack of appetite, but now it had developed into an entirely different beast. Jisung found himself partaking in Felix’s calorie counting, think of ways to cut high-calorie foods of out his diet. He tried his best to limit himself to eating “safe” foods such fruit and yogurt and sometimes even plain rice. He would stand with Felix and complain with him about how their thighs were too thick, stomachs not flat enough, faces too round. Jisung and Felix were in a fatal competition to become the smallest, the thinnest. They wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect.

Most of the members hadn’t seemed to notice the dangerous game the two were playing, the edge they were teetering upon. Every once in a while, Woojin would shoot the one of them a glare when they claimed they had already eaten, but the other was always there to back them up, describing an extravagant meal that they had supposedly consumed together. 

However, Jisung and Feix were the first to admit to the other that they should eat. They encouraged each other to eat more, praised the other when they’d successfully had a full meal. Every time that one of them would eat, the other would secretly smile to themselves, knowing that they just got that much further ahead in the race. The race to the perfect figure. 

 

Woojin saw the way that Jisung and Felix moved their breakfast around on their plates, barely eating anything. They thought they were being discrete, but once you knew what to look for, the signs were obvious. It was glaringly apparent how little they were eating if you actually watched them, actually paid attention to how much food made the trip into their mouths. 

Across the table, Chan and Minho met Woojin’s eyes, communicating their understanding of situation involving Jisung, Felix, and eating. When Woojin had originally stated how he was worried about their weight, Chan and Minho had looked at him like he was crazy stating that the two ate all the time. Woojin had simply responded with telling them to watch the younger pair during a meal time and see how much food they actually consumed. Now, Chan and Changbin found themselves becoming even more grateful for the doctor’s appointment that was set up for later today. Everyone, especially Jisung and Felix, was overdue for a checkup. 

 

Once everyone was fed up with waiting for Jisung and Felix to finish their breakfast, they all stood up from the table and went to clean off their dishes, acting as if they didn’t care how much food was dumped into the trash can. 

“Be ready to leave in 15 minutes,” Chan called out as everyone began to disperse from the kitchen.

Jisung rolled his eyes at his leader’s obsessiveness over being on time and trailed after Seungmin. Plopping down on the bed next to the singer, Jisung sighed dramatically and rested his head on Seungmin’s shoulder. “Why do we always have to get up so early? I’m tired.”

In response, Seungmin shrugged Jisung’s head off his shoulder, “Maybe if you didn’t stay up so late you wouldn’t be so tired. Ever think of that?”

Jisung huffed dramatically and sprawled out on the bed. “I don’t  _ want _ to go sleep earlier. What even is the point of sleep? Life is too short to waste time on frivolous things like sleep.” 

Jisung flinched as a pillow nailed him in the head. “If you hate sleep so much, then get off of my bed. Only sleep-lovers deserve to lay on such a sacred space.”

Seungmin continued to beat him with a pillow until Jisung rolled off of his bed, just in time for Jeongin to burst into their room, entirely too energetic for this early in the morning, “Let’s go guys! I don’t want to be yelled at by Chan again, he can be scary.”

“Anything for my favorite, youngest member.” Seungmin slid off his bed and ruffled Jeongin’s hair before heading towards the door. Jeongin looked Jisung in the eye and crinkled his nose in disgust at Seungmin’s action, before running out the door and calling after the singer to wait for him. Jisung rolled his eyes, and strolled out the door, meeting up with Hyunjin who had finally picked out his outfit for the day.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Wait, this isn’t the way to the company.” At the sound of Jeongin’s voice, Jisung looked up from his phone and realized the younger was right. They were traveling in the opposite direction of the JYP building.

“We’re actually going to the doctor’s,” their manger answered, “You guys are all overdue for a checkup.”

“Oh,” Jeongin muttered and returned back to playing games on his phone.

Jisung, on the other hand, wasn’t as easily soothed. He had never been particularly fond of doctor’s offices and today was no exception. The doctor’s office always made him feel nervous. They always asked way too many personal questions and wanted to check up on your weight and ask how much you were eating. Not to mention the needles. He wasn’t scared of needles or the doctor’s office, of course; there were just many things he would prefer doing, like wrestling a hungry bear.

Their van pulled up to the squat, white building, and Jisung took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he would face inside. He tightly grasped Minho’s hand as they entered the sterile environment, buzzing with the low-level conversations of the people in the waiting room. Jisung sat down in a hard plastic chair, Minho on one side and Hyunjin on the other. He watched the little children running around with abandon as their manager signed them in at the cream-colored desk, having a lengthy conversation with the strict-looking receptionist. Finally, their manager headed back over to where they were sitting, equiped with nine clipboards and pens.

“You have to fill these out--don’t worry they’re confidential, only you and the doctor will know your answers.”

They all nodded in tandem and wordlessly accepted the boards from their manager. Jisung began to read what was printed on the page:

‘ **In the past year have you had more than just a sip of alcohol?**

**Have you smoked?**

**Have you done any drugs?** ’

Jisung smiled to himself at the questions as he marked ‘no’ to all three and flipped to the next page. If all the questions were like those this would be no problem. As an underage idol he didn’t want to any of those things, too afraid of causing a scandal or messing up his health and career. 

However, Jisungs cocky smile melted off his face as he read he read the first question on the next page: ‘ **Over the past week how often have you felt…**

**Low in mood, sad, feeling “blah”** ’

He glanced nervously at his bandmates on either side of him, but they were luckily too involved in their own papers to be paying any attention to him. Steeling himself for what he was about to do, Jisung pulled the clipboard up to his chest and checked the box that read ‘ **Most of the time** ’. For once, Jisung was going to be honest even though the very idea of the doctor’s reaction scared him witless. He was not looking forward to the conversation he was doubtlessly going to have with the doctor once they looked over his sheet. But then again, maybe it was time to get help, maybe it was time to admit that everything was not alright. Jisung’s thoughts were starting to scare him. He hated the dark road that he was heading down, was terrified of where it would lead him. So, Jisung filled out the rest of the sheet accurately, even checking ‘ **Almost every day** ’ when the paper asked him how often he thought about self harm or suicide. His answer to that question in particular scared him the most. Everyone knew that you never said ‘yes’ to the suicide question--not ever. That was a sure fire way to get yourself slapped into a mental institution. However, Jisung had just admitted to self-harming and/or suicidal thoughts. When he lowered the clipboard and placed it face-down in his lap, his hands were shaking. He was starting to breathe harder than usual. His true feelings were permanently inked into the paper and there was nothing he could do to change them. He was going to have to face the consequences of his actions, face the full brunt of a diagnosis.

Before he could freak out even more about what was checked on that unassuming piece of paper, a nurse called Jisung’s name and Hyunjin gave his hand one last comforting squeeze before Jisung headed into the depths of the doctor’s office, tightly clutching his damning clipboard in his white-knuckled grasp.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the almost week late update guys, this week was really rough for me with school starting back up and stuff. I'm feeling a little better today, though, and hopefully I'll be back on my regular updating schedule and chapter length next week.
> 
> Thank you for all of your love and support! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	17. Chapter 17

He had to get weighed first. Before seeing the doctor, Jisung had to step on the scale and face the cold hard truth of the numbers that would flash before his eyes. 

Jisung took off his shoes and slowly clambered onto the small, white square. He watched as the LED numbers slowly climbed before settling on a number that was low, maybe too low. Hopefully not. It had been a while since he’d been to the doctor, they didn’t have too much to compare his weight to, right? His weight was about the same as it had been during his trainee days--the last time he’d been to the doctor. He couldn’t have possibly grown too much since then. If that weight was passable a year or two ago it should be fine now. It’d be fine. Perfectly fine.  

     The nurse didn’t comment on his weight, only stoically jotted the numbers down on her pad of paper and wordlessly lead Jisung to the room where he would wait for the doctor. She shut the door behind her on her way out, leaving Jisung alone in the drab room with only his thoughts, and the clipboard. 

Jisung put the clipboard with its damning answers facedown on the table beside him, he didn’t want to look at it anymore, embarrassed about what it admitted, ashamed that he felt this way. He hated his weakness, hated how he was just going to be another teenager who couldn’t handle the stress, yet another idol that cracked under the pressure, proof of the broken system. Maybe he was faking it; maybe he just wasn’t strong enough; maybe he just needed to try harder. Maybe Jisung was just a big fake, a fool. Maybe he was just doing it for the attention. Maybe this was all just made up, just in his head. 

Jisung was startled out of his self-deprecating train of thought by the sound of the door swinging open on well-oiled hinges. Through the doorway walked the doctor, dressed professionally in a white coat, wheeling a cart equipped with a laptop in front of her. A friendly smile adorned her face as she introduced herself as Doctor Kim and stated that she was just going to be giving Jisung a quick checkup today, and that he didn’t need any shots today.

In response, Jisung just nodded, shooting her a quick, nervous smile before grabbing the clipboard and thrusting it at her, refusing to look her in the eye. Doctor Kim’s calm demeanor did nothing to ease Jisung’s nerves and he found himself nervously bouncing his leg up and down in his seat.

However, Doctor Kim didn’t even look at the clipboard that Jisung practically threw at her, instead setting it aside for the time being as she asked Jisung to jump up onto the examination table so she could take his blood pressure and start his checkup. 

Jisung obliged and clambered onto the table, wincing as he heard the paper crinkle and rip as he did so. As soon as he was properly seated, Jisung immediately started quickly swinging his legs and fidgeting with the hem of his clothes. His heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. He hated the doctor’s office, hated the anticipation of how Doctor Kim would react to what Jisung had written on that horrible sheet. 

“Do you like being in Stray Kids?” the doctor asked as she readied the blood pressure cuff.

“Yeah...it’s fun and stuff.” Jisung worried his lip between his teeth.

“You get along well with all of the members?” She strapped the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm.

“Yeah, they’re all really great. Uh, really nice and stuff.” Jisung tried his best to take deep breaths and relax as the cuff tightened around his arm. If he was nervous it would mess up his blood pressure. However, his efforts were in vain because as the cuff began to loosen again, Doctor Kim pursed her lips at the number. “We’ll have to try again later when you’re less anxious, there’s no way your blood pressure is this high with how active you are. Speaking of which, are you sleeping well? At least eight hours a night?”

Jisung avoided her gaze, “Well...sometimes it’s hard for me to fall asleep and you know with being an idol and stuff that’s kind of hard with our schedules and stuff, but I try my best and get as much sleep as I can.”

“Okay,” the doctor noted something on her paper, “And how is your eating? Lot’s of fruits and vegetables? Making sure you’re eating enough food?”

“Yeah, I always try my best to eat well-balanced meals.” it wasn’t a  _ lie  _ exactly, he really did try his best to eat. His best just happened to not be very much.

She nodded, writing something else down. Then, she reached over and grabbed the clipboard. Jisung’s heart dropped. As she skimmed his answers, Jisung carefully watched her face, trying his best to gauge her reaction. Her face had remained stoic the entire time. Jisung didn’t know if that was good or bad. 

“So, describe how you’ve been feeling lately.”

“Oh, uh, okay. Well, I sometimes feel suddenly feel really anxious, like my heart starts to race and my breathing becomes uneven and uh, my chest hurts and my hands shake. And then, I kind of always just like feel on edge?”

“Do you find yourself avoiding doing things because of these feelings of anxiety?”

“Uh, a little bit. Like I avoid my members sometimes ‘cause they’re like too loud and I uh, sometimes have had to leave dance practice to calm down.” Jisung’s leg was now going a mile a minute and he didn’t think his shirt was ever going to full recover.

“And have you been feeling less motivated lately, is it harder to get out of bed in the morning?”

“Uh, I guess? I mean a little bit?”

“Overall do you find yourself sad more often, not enjoying things you used to?”

“Um, a little bit?” Jisung didn’t want to have depression. More than one mental illness just seemed excessive. Anxiety was enough. 

“Okay, and you mentioned self-harm can you please tell me more about that?”

“Oh. I, uh, cut. On my hip.” Jisung thought he was going to explode with how nervous he was.

“For how long?”

“Uh, a couple of months I think?”

“How often do you cut?” 

“Um, I’m not totally sure, like two or three times a week?”

“And how often do you think about cutting?”

“Almost everyday,” Jisung sheepishly admitted, focusing his gaze on his fingers, rather than the doctor’s face.

“Okay,” Doctor Kim looked up from her computer where she had diligently been taking notes, “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but cutting is not healthy. Not physically or mentally. Simply from a microbiology standpoint, you are opening up your body to millions of germs and you are lucky your wounds haven’t gotten infected.” Her voice was surprisingly sincere. Doctor Kim sounded calm, but serious and somehow comforting. “I want to make a deal with you. Let’s make a no-cutting pact. Okay, do you promise to start cutting?”

“I promise,” Jisung echoed, actually convinced to stop cutting for the time being.

“Good, now I think it’s safe to diagnose you with anxiety and most likely depression too. I can tell you’ve been more down lately than you’ll admit. I’m also going to have to speak with your manager. If you’re going to get better you're going to have to see a therapist. They’ll help you find better coping mechanisms and reason through what to do when you’re anxious. I also don’t like prescribing medicine until a person has been seeing a therapist for a while because sometimes these things can be bettered without the aid of medicine.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Jisung muttered. He wasn’t thrilled about having to see a therapist, but then again, he did want to get better and if that’s what it would take then so be it.

“Also, one more thing, do you want to tell your manager about cutting?”

Jisung answered immediately: “No,” he didn’t want to tell anyone about cutting, the less people that knew, the better.

“I think that if he knew, he’d be more inclined to get you into therapy faster. I know that sometimes managers can be reluctant to do that kind of thing when it comes to idols.”

“Yeah…”

“And don’t you want to get better? That can’t be done without professional help.”

“Yes, but...I don’t know. I just really don’t want to tell him.”

“That’s okay. I still have to finish the rest of the checkup and retake your blood pressure, you still have plenty of time to decide.”

“Okay.” Jisung was conflicted. He really didn’t want to have to admit to their manager that he was broken in that way, that he had taken to splitting open his skin to quiet the demons inside his mind. But, on the other hand, he saw the doctor’s point of how the fact that Jisung was cutting would further motivate the manager to seek out professional help for Jisung. But, what if he got kicked out of Stray Kids? What if he had to take a break from the group until he was better? He really didn’t want to do that. And, telling people was scary. He would be judged, seen as weak, useless. Their manager would hate him. He would never get any lines ever again. But, he trusted Doctor Kim, she had never judged him, was kind and understanding, and she seemed to think it was a good idea to tell his manager. 

“So, have you decided if you want to tell your manager?”

“Um…do you really think I should?”

“Yes, I think it would be the best plan of action. I can tell him, if that would make it easier, and you don’t even have to be in the room.”

“Okay, I guess. Which would be easier? Being in or out of the room?”

“It’s completely up to you. Whichever you prefer.”

“I guess, I’ll stay in the room then.” Jisung wanted to be able to gauge his reaction.

“I’ll go get him. We’ll be right back.”

When Doctor Kim left, Jisung started to anxiously pull at his clothes, feeling uncomfortable in his skin. He could feel the anxiety welling up in his chest, bordering on overwhelming. The anticipation was killing him.

The door opened and Doctor Kim entered followed by the manager. Once everyone had sat down Doctor Kim jumped right into it: “So, Jisung said that he’s been feeling really anxious and depressed lately and that he’s been having panic attacks during practice which can make it hard for him to dance and perform all of the moves correctly. He also said that sometimes he finds it hard to function and do everyday activities because he’s so anxious or it’s hard for him to get out of the bed in the morning because he has no energy. Because of this I recommend that Jisung should visit a therapist to help him cope healthily with his anxiety.”

The manager looked only slightly surprised at this news, as if he was already sort of expecting it. 

“Also, Jisung told me that to deal with his emotions and feelings of anxiety he sometimes cuts.”

Jisung winced at her words and watched as their manager’s expression shifted ever so slightly. 

“We talked about how cutting is very risky and bad for your health and Jising and I made a pact for him to stop cutting. However, the fact that he had these feelings and that they will not go away even if he stops cutting is indicative that seeing a therapist would be the most beneficial for Jisung’s mental wellbeing. 

“I have a list of therapists in the area that I recommend and are good with working with teenagers.” Doctor Kim pulled out a paper and handed it to the manager who still had yet to say a word.

After skimming the list and looking at all of the names, their manager turned to face Jisung, “I’m sorry that you felt this way and that I never noticed. It’s my job to take care of you guys and I’m terribly sorry that I fell short in such a drastic manner and never noticed how you have been feeling lately.”

“Will, will I be kicked out of Stray Kids?” Jisung asked tentatively. 

The manager looked taken aback at the question, “Of course not! This hasn’t been affecting your performance in any way so far and I don’t see any reason at all to kick you out of the group. You are a very valuable member to this group.”

“Th-thank you,” Jisung was feeling slightly better now that his manger knew and wanted to help--not kick him out.

“Is it okay if I talk to Jisung alone for a couple of minutes?” the doctor asked.

“Of course,” his manager stood up and made his way out the door. 

Once the door was once again firmly shut, Doctor Kim turned to speak to Jisung once more: “I’m so proud of you today. I know how hard that must have been and you are so brave for telling me how you have been feeling lately. This really shows how strong you are and I just want you to know that I think that you’re amazing for doing this. Also, I just want you to know that you matter. You matter in this world and you make such a difference to so many people. I promise that life will get better and that the world is such a better place with you in it.” 

Jisung choked back tears at the doctor’s words, “Thank you,” he muttered. He had really needed that.

“Okay, one last thing, I need to take your blood pressure one last time.”

Jisung held out his arm and this time his blood pressure was a perfectly normal number. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this all in one sitting lol
> 
> Also, I just want you guys to know that you are all such amazing people and I love you all. I promise that it will get better eventually, you just need to hang on for a little bit longer. You all make the world such a better place and you have improved the lives of so many people around you, even though you may have not even realized it. I hope that you know that you are all special and amazing people and I hope you have an amazing week!!


	18. Chapter 18

     On their way back to the studio from the doctor’s office, the car ride was filled with the sound of Jeongin’s complaints: “I had to get three shots.  _ Three  _ shots. My arm hurts. I’m in a tremendous amount of pain. I don’t even think I can move my arm properly anymore; I can’t even lift it up.”

     “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Seungmin crooned, “Do you need a hug?” He proceeded to smother the younger who did not hesitate to vocalize his protests.

“I’m just kidding! I feel fine now. All of your hugging and stuff has completely cured all of my pain, so you can get off of me now!”

However, Seungmin didn’t acknowledge Jeongin’s protests and continued to hold him in a bear hug, pinching his cheeks, and telling the younger how cute he was.

“Woojin!” Jeongin reached out to the oldest member for help. “Please save me! Seungmin is going to kill me!”

Woojin didn’t even look up from his phone. “I guess you should’ve thought about that before you started to endlessly complain.”

“Nooo, I’ve been betrayed!” Jeongin wailed before finally giving in to the torture that was Seungmin’s love.

For once, Jisung was glad that the two youngest members were so boisterous--it kept the attention of off him. Right now Jisung didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He just needed to be alone so he could have some time to process the doctor’s words:

“Has anxiety and depression...needs to see a therapist...self-harming.”

It was a lot. Granted, Jisung had know that he needed help, had known that something was wrong with him, had known that it wasn’t good that the only time he felt at peace was when his skin was cut into bloody ribbons; but somehow the actual confirmation of his broken mental state was overwhelming. Jisung just wished that he could have a second to mull over everything, but they were already heading towards the JYP building; a grueling dance practice no doubt in the near future.

Jisung let out a heavy sigh and shifted in his seat, drawing his legs up into his chest and forlornly resting his head on top of his knees. He grabbed his scratched, white earbuds and shakily shoved them into his phone, relaxing the instant the music of his ‘Contemplative’ playlist flowed through his ears. He closed his eyes and focused on the lyrics of the soothing song that was just now reaching its crescendo.  _ I can do this _ , he reminded himself,  _ I can make it through practice. I can calm down; I can stay calm. It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. I can do this _ . 

He felt Felix lean his head against his shoulder and moved his head so that it rested on top of his friend’s. Jisung wondered if Felix’s appointment had gone similarly to his, if Felix was also diagnosed with a mental illness, if Felix also had to see a therapist. He didn’t say anything to the Aussie, though. He didn’t want to ruin the moment, lose the comfort of human contact. So instead of speaking to Felix, Jisung simply let himself relax further as his eyes drifted closed.

 

Someone was shaking his shoulder, “C’mon you two sleepyheads, we’re here.”

Jisung cracked open his eyes to see Chan smiling down and him and Felix. He groaned and shrugged Felix off his shoulder, stretching out his long limbs. Beside him, Felix cracked his eyes open and yawned, “We’re already here?” his words were slurred with sleep.

“Yeah Felix, c’mon, it’s time for you to finally get up.” Changbin gently grasped Felix’s arm and led him out of the van. Jisung trailed behind them, futilely trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

Walking up to the entrance of the JYP building, Jisung tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, too tired to pay attention to where he was stepping. Hyunjin was suddenly there, hauling Jisung back up to his feet before he hit the hard, cold ground. “A little tired there?” Hyunjin joked.

Jisung just grumbled in response, his mind was still too foggy to word coherent words. 

Hyunjin didn’t seem too bothered by Jisung’s nonverbal answer, and simply linked his arms with the rapper, helping to make sure he didn’t fall again. It was in this manner that Stray Kids proceeded to the dance practice room, lead by their manager. As soon as they entered the door, everyone immediately started to diligently stretch, wanting to get practice over with as soon as possible. 

Jisung felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around; the manager was standing behind him, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Uh, sure.” Jisung answered, standing up and following the manager to a private room down the hall.

Once he was seated in one of the many hard plastic chairs in the room, the manager began to speak: “So, I wanted to hear your ideas on this, but I think it would be a good idea to tell the other members about what the doctor diagnosed you with. You’re going to have to be going to therapy and they’re probably going to find out one way or another. Also, a few of them have already expressed their concern for you, so I think this would help ease their fears.”

Jisung was suddenly a lot more awake, “Um, well...I’m not sure. How much would you tell them?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“Oh, uh, maybe,” Jisung fidgeted anxiously in his chair, eyes looking everywhere but his manager’s eyes.

“If it makes you feel any better, I already had this conversation with Felix in the doctor’s office and he agreed to tell the other’s that he was diagnosed with an eating disorder.”

Jisung finally looked into the manager’s eyes. He had a calm, sincere, caring expression on his face. Jisung couldn’t detect any hint of malice in his eyes. “Okay, but don’t tell them about the self-harming or anything.”

A small smile graced the manager’s face, “Of course. I’m glad that you trust your members enough to tell them something so personal. Whether you realize it or not, you’re really quite brave, Jisung”

Jisung nodded and looked down at his lap; he didn’t feel brave. He felt like a stupid coward who couldn’t even control his own feelings. He was some kind of broken freak with a mental illness. His members, his manager, worried about him. Jisung somehow felt as if he was somehow letting everyone down. They were all going to hate him. He wanted to call after the manager and say that he changed his mind, say that he didn’t want his secret to be exposed to the whole group, but he was already heading out the door and Jisung couldn’t force the offending words out of his mouth. Instead he silently stood up and cautiously followed the manager back into the practice room. He sat down next to Felix and tightly grasped his hand, hoping he would understand Jisung’s need for comfort. Felix simply returned Jisung’s grasp with a comforting squeeze and whispered into his hair, “Don’t worry, I’ll be here for you.”

The manager clapped his hands to gather everyone’s attention and then started his damning monologue, “Actually guys, I wanted to talk to you all about something before we started practice. We need to discuss some things that happened at the doctor’s office concerning Jisung and Felix.” Jisung winced as every eye in the room swiveled to look at him and Felix. He knew that his members meant no harm, but right now he was terrified of how they would react: Would they hate him? Would they yell at him? Tell him how weak he was? How he didn’t deserve to be in Stray Kids? How he was broken, an utter mess?

Jisung grasped Felix’s hand even tighter, clinging to it as if it was his only lifeline, the only grounding force in his life. Felix didn’t complain at the added pressure, just silently accepted it. It was times like this that Jisung was endlessly grateful for Felix.

“Okay, many of you pointed out how recently Felix hasn’t been eating very much and Jisung hasn’t been acting like himself, which is what prompted this doctor’s appointment.”

_ Oh, someone had said something to the manager, that’s why there was the sudden trip to the doctor’s office _ . Jisung and Felix shared a knowing look as they both came to the same conclusion.

“Basically, the doctor confirmed that Felix is quite underweight and has an eating disorder, while Jisung has anxiety and depression, and Jisung’s weight will be continued to be monitored to make sure that it doesn’t drop below the healthy range. Next week they’ll start weekly appointments with a therapist, so I will give you guys revised schedules with that worked in.” 

As soon as the manger had started to speak, Jisung refused to look up from where is eyes were glued to his lap, so he was surprised when he felt the first pair of arms wrapping themselves around him. It was Hyunjin. “Hey, Jisung, I just want you to know that no matter what, I will be here for you. You can talk to me about anything.”

Tears began to leak out of Jisung’s eyes at Hyunjin’s words, overcome with love for his friend. Soon, everyone else followed Hyunjin and Felix and Jisung were in the middle of a huge group hug. Everyone was whispering affirmations into their ears: “You guys are amazing.” “You’re so strong, I love you so much.” “I’m always going to be here for you no matter what, okay?” “I promise you one day this is going to get better.”

Before he knew it, Jisung was sobbing into whoever’s shoulder was closest. He just wasn’t expecting everyone to be so nice and supportive and was completely overwhelmed by their positive support. They all were so caring and there was no way Jisung could ever properly express how grateful he was for them and how much he loved each and every single one of his members.

“Oh Jisung, don’t cry. It’ll be okay.” Chan soothed, starting to tear up as well.

“I know, I’m just so thankful. I love you all so much.” 

“Oh, Jisung we love you too, and we will always be a shoulder for you to lean on when needed.” 

In that moment, surrounded by his members, Jisung felt more content and loved than he had in a long time.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the fluffiest, happiest chapters I have ever written for this fic, so I hope that you enjoyed the break from the usual angst. 
> 
> Also, this was actually posted at like, a reasonable time, so I'm pretty proud of myself for that. 
> 
> As always, I love to hear what you think, so don't be too shy to leave a comment!


	19. Chapter 19

A couple days later Jisung found himself sitting in a car with Felix and the manager. They were on their way to therapy. 

Jisung didn’t quite know how he felt about therapy. On one hand, therapy would help him get better, help him feel more like himself. On the other hand, going to therapy was admitting that there was something wrong with him, something that needed to be fixed. But then again, Jisung had to go, so he might as well make the most out of it; even if he hated the idea of spilling his guts to a complete stranger. 

Felix, after a long talk with the doctor, and then with Changbin, was ready for therapy. He was ready to try and get better. He wanted to be able to eat again without guilt weighing him down. He wanted to be able to look at food and imagine eating it without almost breaking down in tears, too afraid to let the poisonous substance touch his mouth. He quite honestly hated being like this, being too afraid to eat, too afraid of a bloated figure to let any substance other than water enter his stomach. He was ready to make a change, to feel better about himself, about his body.

All too soon for Jisung’s comfort, their van was pulling up in front of the building where their therapists took up office. As the door of the car slowly slid open, Jisung took a deep breath to mentally prepare himself for what was about to happen. He carefully put one foot, then the other on the asphalt of the parking lot and took measured steps as he followed Felix and the manager up to the opaque glass door.  Their manager firmly grasped the door handle and pulled it open without hesitation. Felix easily followed him inside, but Jisung lingered at the threshold, looking in at the comfortably decorated interior. There was a large, overstuffed couch in the corner and several cushioned chairs lining the walls. On the right side sat the receptionist behind a tall counter, busily talking on the phone. 

Jisung didn’t realize how long he had been standing under the door frame until Felix grabbed his hand and led him to the couch, sitting down next to him, still holding his hand. “Hey, it’ll be okay. There’s no reason to be nervous.”

Jisung just mutely nodded in response to Felix’s words, focusing on their manager exchanging papers with the receptionist. Soon, their manager was walking over to them, two packets of paper in his hands.

“Here you go, you have to fill these out.” Jisung was handed a pen and one of the packets. The first page was information about himself, his full name, names of his parents, and other basic information that he easily filled out. The next page, though, was harder. It started off with a list of symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, nightmares, lack of appetite, self harm, and many others. He then had to elaborate on any boxes he checked and discuss why he chose to start therapy. 

Needless to say, it took Jisung a while to write down everything, mostly because he wasn’t sure what to write, how to phrase it, how much to tell, how much to keep to himself. He wasn’t very keen on disclosing all of his secrets and darkest feelings to a complete stranger. 

After signing on the dotted line for the last time, Jisung set down his pen and looked up at his manger expectantly. Felix had already finished a couple minutes ago and had been sent down the hallway and through a closed door to meet his therapist. Now, it was Jisung’s turn to  take the seemingly endless trek down the narrow hallway. 

The receptionist stood up and walked Jisung to an innocent looking white door, “This is your stop,” she said with a nod before she turned around on her heel and returned back to her desk, leaving Jisung all alone in front of the imposing door. 

Gathering all of his courage, Jisung reached out a shaky hand to slowly turn the door handle and let the door creak open. As soon as the door began to open a fluffy little dog suddenly ran out of the room and started to sniff at Jisung’s feet. He let out a surprised laugh before leaning down to pet the little animal. 

“Hello there.” Jisung looked up, startled, to see a woman standing in the room, “My name is Kim Jiwoo and I see that you’ve already met my dog, Gom.” She extended a hand.

Jisung quickly scrambled to his feet and shook her hand, “Uh, hi, my name is Jisung.” he stuttered, examining his therapist for the first time. She looked relatively young and was well dressed with a pleasant smile on her face. He supposed she looked nice enough.

“Why don’t you take a seat and we can begin talking?” she gestured to the couch across the well-lit room, painted in light, nude tones.

Jisung nodded his understanding, crossed the room, Gom on his heels, and perched on the corner of the soft couch.

Overall his first appointment with his therapist was pretty unremarkable. It was mostly just getting to know each other: Jisung sharing details about his daily life, elaborating on his answers on the packet. Near the end of their appointment Mrs. Kim suggested that Jisung keep a journal of his feelings, a place to write and maybe a way to cope when he felt anxious. Jisung had pondered the suggestion for a few minutes before slowly nodding his head. Her suggestion made sense. Maybe he’d actually do that, write down his thoughts and feelings, there was definitely a couple of empty notebooks lying around the dorm. 

At the end of their 50 minutes Jisung said his goodbyes, pet Gom one last time, and headed towards the waiting room where Felix was seated.

“How did yours go?” the Aussie inquired.

“It was pretty good. She’s nice, has a cute dog. We just mainly got to know each other and stuff. What about you?”

“I like him. He some good insight, but today was mainly just introductions and stuff.”

“Yeah.” There was a lull in the conversation while the two boys pondered their respective appointments.

The way home was also similarly quiet, but the veil of silence was broken the minute they entered the dorm: Jisung had barely set foot into the doorway when he was being pounced on by an overexcited Minho, “You’re back! I’m so proud of you for going! You’re so brave.”

Jisung laughed and jokingly shoved the dancer off of him. He noted that Felix was likewise tangled up with Changbin.

“How did it go?” Chan inquired.

“It was fine, just getting to know you stuff.” Jisung felt a little awkward talking about his therapy appointment--it just felt like such a weird, private thing to talk about with someone, but he put on a false bravado to ease the worries of his members.

“Cool, do you like her?” Woojin inquired.

“Yeah.” Then, trying to distract them, Jisung slightly changed the subject of their conversation: “My therapist has a dog; he’s super small and fluffy.”

“A dog! Is he cute?” Seungmin exclaimed.

“Yeah, aren’t all dogs?”

“Nah, not Kkami.”

“Hey!” Hyunjin shouted from across the room, “Those are fighting words.”

Seungmin ran off with a laugh, Hyunjin chasing close behind them. Just like that, the conversation shifted away from therapy and Jisung was able to fully relax as the atmosphere of the dorm returned back to its normal playfulness.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for such a short chapter, this week wasn't the best for me--especially Thursday and Friday. But, after a lot of baking (I think my dad is going to yell at me when he comes homes to another batch of brownies) I'm feeling a lot better. Plus, now my audition is over with so hopefully I'll be less stressed (if I ignore the fact that this week is hell week).
> 
> In other, better, news, I'm going to be posting a new Stray Kids AU fanfiction. I already have the first chapter and a half written and I also planned out the whole thing, which is something new to me. I usually don't plan too much--just write. But, I actually planned out a ton for this and wrote down characterization and a background for everyone, so I'm super exited. I think I might post the first chapter of that sometime this week, so be on the look out for that!
> 
> Anyways, thank you if you read all of that, and I hope that you have an amazing week!


	20. Chapter 20

Felix got used to going to therapy every week. It helped that he liked his therapist. He was a nice, older man who never judged Felix and helped him through his bad days. 

Together in therapy, they would talk about why Felix hated the idea of eating, what thoughts he had at mealtimes and how to combat them. He suggested starting slow, just taking it one bite, one day at a time. He never expected Felix to just instantly start eating full meals off the bat and Felix was grateful for that. 

Felix remembered one of their first appointments when he was mad and frustrated at himself for not being able to complete his meal plan for several days of the week:

Felix had been sobbing tears of frustration into his hands as he described how he had felt that week when trying to eat everything on his plan: “It was just too much. It was so much food and I couldn’t possibly finish it all. I remember looking at my plate and all of the food on it and realizing how incredibly fat and bloated I would get if I ate it all. I just couldn’t stop imagining myself as a horribly inflated figure, fat just rolling off my stomach, fans ridiculing me, and I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t eat anything on my plate. 

“I’m such a failure. How am I supposed to get better if I can’t even eat my pathetically small meal plan? I’m never going to get better. I hate this. I hate that I can’t eat enough. I hate that I have to feel this way, think this way. There’s no way I’m ever going to get better. I’m just in it too far. I can’t eat enough. It’s so frustrating.

Felix’s therapist had waited quietly, patiently during his rant, periodically taking notes. When Felix had finally finished, he spoke in his soothing voice: “You didn’t fail this week, Felix--not even close. You ate over half of the food that was on your meal plan. That’s more food than you’d been consuming not even two-three weeks ago. You are improving, whether you see it or not. In no way are you a failure, just the fact that you’re trying proves so much. You’ve come so far and it’s natural to have a couple of setbacks.”

“Oh,” Felix had never thought of it that way, he  _ had  _ been eating more than usual, even if it was a bad week for him.

“Now, let’s discuss what we can do in the future during mealtimes when you're having discouraging thoughts to help you become better at combating them. Do you remember what we discussed last week?”

 

Over time, Felix began to get better at replacing his toxic thoughts with more positive, encouraging ones. He learned to be more gentle with himself, developed a more positive image of himself. And, Felix began to slowly gain back the pounds that he had lost. At first it had been terrifying to watch the numbers slowly climb upwards. After his first weigh-in a month into therapy, Felix remembers being horrified at gaining 2 kilos:

At the doctor’s office, Felix stared at the scale in horror. He was almost 2 full kilos heavier than he had been a month ago. He was getting so fat. His fans were going to the him, call him overweight, large, fat, be disappointed with him. It was too much. He couldn’t possibly carry around all of this extra weight. It was awful, disgusting, repulsive.

As soon as Felix got home, he ran straight to the bathroom and stuck two fingers down his throat, forcing himself to puke up what was left of his lunch. When he was done puing out what little was in his guts, Felix stayed in front of the toilet, sobbing into the cool ceramic. He was such a failure. Everyone was going to hate him. Not only was he fat, but he was also puking his guts up like an idiot. 

That’s when the guilt began to set in and Felix realized exactly what he had just done. He hadn’t forced himself to throw up since he started therapy. This new revelation brought a fresh wave of tears to Felix’s eyes.

This is how Changbin found him several minutes later: clutching onto the toilet, sobbing, bile still smeared across his chin. 

“Oh Felix,” the older cooed, wiping off the Aussie’s face, and enveloping him in a hug. “Was your doctor’s appointment hard?”

Felix nodded, choking back his tears.

“Oh, Felix. It’s okay. I will love you no matter how much weight you gain. We’re all so proud of you for how hard you’ve been working and I’m sure the fans are too.”

“I just feel like such a f-failure. I’m n-not supposed too…” Felix’s words were drown out by his sobs.

“No, you’re not a failure, you could never be. I promise you, one small relapse means nothing. You’re human, Felix. No one expects you to be perfect. You’re trying your best and that’s all that matters, okay?”

Felix slowly nodded in response.

“Okay, now let’s get you cleaned up.” Changbin helped Felix stand up and wiped off his face with a wet washcloth before leading the Aussie to his bed where they curled up together and the younger promptly fell asleep, exhausted from his emotional outburst. 

All too soon, Changbin found himself slowly shaking elix awake, “Dinner,” he whispered into Felix’s ear. Felix shrunk away from that word as if it was poisonous, the memory of his 2 kilo gain fresh in his mind. 

“How about this? I’ll grab out food and bring it back here. You can just eat in here without worrying about everyone else looking at you. Would that be easier?”

“Yeah,” Felix murmured, happy that Changbin had come up with such a simple solution t the huge problem that was looming over Felix’s head. On a good day, Felix hated all of the eyes on him as he ate, feeling as if everyone at the table was judging him and the amount that he consumed. Now, in the light of his recent weigh-in, Felix hadn’t been sure that he’d be able to make it through dinner, with all that food surrounding him,  let alone actually eat anything himself. This way was just more painless for everyone involved. 

After a couple of minutes, Changbin returned with two bowls of soup, one significantly smaller than the other. Changbin wordlessly handed Felix his soup, then sat down beside him and began to talk. For the entire time that they ate, Changbin talked about the most random of things. He discussed what tracks they were making for their newest album, his opinions on how practice went, how crazy Seungmin had been lately, his feelings on traffic lights (Felix wished that he could say that he was joking about that last one). 

Eventually, Felix pushed away his half-empty bowl of soup, done with it for today. Changbin, barely even looked at how much Felix had eaten before gushing about how he was so proud of Felix for eating and how well he had been doing. That night, Felix went to bed feeling a lot better about himself than he had that morning.

After that, days began to get better. Felix found himself trying more and more, becoming increasingly successful at ignoring the voice in his head and consuming more and more food without guilt, sticking to his meal plan every day. Of course there were small ups and downs, but Felix could always find comfort in his fellow members. It was with this positive attitude that Felix had his greatest fall:

      It happened one day while Felix was eating lunch in the JYP cafeteria with Seungmin. He had just finished a full plate of food and was coming back with seconds--more food than he had eaten in a long time. Felix was bursting with pride as he began to eat his second helping of food, so proud of himself for finally treating his body the right way, getting enough to eat. While eating Felix’s thoughts turned to his dance practice that was after lunch. It was going to be amazing. He was going to be so energized, so powerful in his dancing, and feel better while performing than he had in months. 

“Wow, you’re eating a lot today,” Seungmin remarked.

“Yeah,” Felix muttered his face full of noodles.

“If you keep eating like that you’re going to have to make sure you don’t grow too much horizontally!” Seungmin laughed after his comment, obviously joking around. However, Felix felt his stomach sink at Seungmin’s remark. He had eaten quite a bit that day, more than Seungmin had. Maybe Seungmin was right, maybe Felix should stop eating so much to make sure that he didn’t get fat. 

_ No, don’t think like that _ . Felix reminded himself,  _ You’re not going to get fat. Eating this much is perfectly okay.  _ However, Felix’s thoughts just kept spiraling downwards and his next bite of food was tasteless. 

Dance practice ended up being awful. Felix couldn’t focus, all he could do was stare at his ugly, fat figure in the mirror and regret eating so much for lunch. He just wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. He was so ugly, so fat, so gluttonous, everyone was going to hate him if he kept eating so much. No one liked a fat idol. He could just imagine all of the hate comments he would find, how many people noticed the disgusting weight he had put on in the past months. It just wouldn’t do. He needed to stop eating, needed to make up for his indulgence as of late.

Finally, after hours of Felix stumbling through practice, unable to get a single move right, Chan finally said that it was time to go home. Everyone let to sighs of relief at Chan’s announcement, but Felix couldn’t help but want to stay for longer; he wanted to try and perfect the moves that he was failing at. However, Woojin put down his foot and wouldn’t let anyone stay at the studio, saying that they could get their work done at home if to was so important, so Felix found himself trailing behind the rest of the group on their walk back to their dorm. Everyone else was excitedly talking with one another, jumping up and down as they talked animatedly. Felix, on the other, hand didn’t feel any of their excitement. He just wanted to get home and curl up into a little ball and never have to deal with anything ever again, especially eating. 

When they were about halfway back to the dorm, Felix felt a hand slip into his. He looked up and was met with Jisung’s comforting gaze. Jisung didn’t say anything, just silently offered Felix his support, and that was honestly all that Felix needed at the moment. 

Back at the dorm, Felix was feeling a little better, but still didn't want to eat. Seungmin’s words were still too fresh in his mind and no matter how hard he tried, Felix just couldn't bring himself to let the disgusting substance reach his lips and dinnertime. Instead, he just sat at the table and stared at his miniscule portion, sometimes poking at it with his chopsticks, but never bringing the food anywhere near his mouth. 

“Are you not going to eat dinner?” Jeongin asked.

“No, not today.” Felix mumbled in response, pushing around his food on his plate.

Woojin shot a worried look to Chan, but no one said anything and just continued their dinner. By now, they had all learned that encouraging Felix to eat just made it worse, and it was better just never to comment on the amount he consumed until mealtime was over. 

Once everyone had finished, Felix stood up from the table and shuffled off to his room. He wasn’t surprised when a few minutes later Woojin walked in, sitting next to Felix on his bed. 

“Not a good day today?” 

“Not really,”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Not particularly,” 

“Okay,” Felix put his head in Woojin’s lap and Woojin wrapped his arms around the younger, offering him much needed comfort.

A few minutes later Felix began to talk, “It’s just so frustrating. I hate it so much. I want to eat; I know I need to eat, but I just...can’t.” he buried his head further into Woojin’s shoulder as tears started to leak out of his eyes.

“Oh, Felix, it’s okay. We can’t control how we feel. It’s natural to have a few setbacks, but you’re still doing great.”

“I know, just…” Felix let out a heavy sigh, unable to put his frustrations into words. Woojin was understanding, though, and didn’t ask Felix to elaborate further, just pulled him tighter into his arms.

They stayed like that until Felix fell asleep and then Woojin gently laid the boy in his bed and headed out to talk to Chan who was probably needlessly worrying about Felix. 

“How’s he doing?” Chan inquired the minute Woojin entered his and Changbin’s shared room.

“He’s okay, just a little stressed out and frustrated with himself, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

Both Chan and Changbin let out sighs of relief.

“We’ve gone through this before, he’ll probably be eating again by tomorrow.”

But, Felix wasn’t eating by the next day. His breakfast went straight in the trash, and his lunch was outright ignored. No one mentioned it to Felix, though. They could see how frustrated and upset he was already, and they didn’t want to further contribute to his saddened state. Instead, every single second, someone was hugging Felix, holding his hand, whispering encouragements into his ear. It did seem to help a little bit: Felix always leaned into their touch, but the Aussie skipped dinner that night for the second night in a row. Again, no one commented on his food intake, but that night was basically see how much you can compliment Felix. Every single second someone was glued to him, wanting to watch a movie or play a game or listen to music or just talk. Needless to say, Felix had plenty to do that night.

Honestly, Felix was glad for the distraction. It kept his mind off of his body weight and how he needed to eat, but couldn’t eat and it was all just so hard. He was constantly fighting a battle in his head and right now the opponent was winning. He just kept hearing Seungmin’s words repeating in his head: “If you keep eating like that you’ll be growing horizontally before long.” The words were said without malice, but they hurt all the same.

At least he had therapy that morning. It always helped to talk to Dr. Choi about his problems; he always helped Felix work through them and come up with reasonable solutions that made so much sense, but for some reason Felix didn’t come up with them by himself. 

When Felix walked through the door at Dr. Choi’s office, he flung himself onto the beige couch. “Boy, do I have a lot to talk to you about today.”

Over the past weeks Felix had become increasingly comfortable with Dr. Choi and was allowed, encouraged in fact, to address him informally.

“Okay, let’s get started then. What’s been up this week?”

“Well, a couple days ago I was doing well and even got seconds at lunch, but then Seungmin made a comment about how I was going to be growing horizontally if I ate that much and that really hurt and I kinda haven’t ate since.”

“Okay,” Dr. Choi jotted down some notes on his clipboard, “Have you talked to Seungmin about how what he said made you feel?”

“No,” Felix looked down at his hands.

“Do you think i would be beneficial to talk to him about it?”

“Yeah, I think it would help because that’s like the main thing that’s keeping me from eating.” 

“Okay then, let’s do a roleplay. I’ll pretend to be Seungmin and you talk to me about what he said.”

“Okay,” Felix awkwardly shifted in his seat. He didn’t particularly like doing roleplays, but they did help. “Hey, Seungmin a couple days ago when you mentioned me ‘growing horizontally’ that kind of hurt.”

“That was good, but just one thing--it didn’t ‘kind of hurt’ you stopped eating. I’d say that’s more than a little bit. Let’s try that again and this time rephrase it so that you aren’t downplaying your feelings.”

Felix continued to practice until he got the wording exactly right, conveying his hurt while still being kind and polite. After that, they then went on to discuss what Felix should do in the future if someone ever said something similar: how he should try to address the problem right away to limit his own suffering. One thing that Dr. Choi said that really stuck with Felix was his response to Felix complaining about how sensitive he was: “Don’t be ashamed of our feelings, they are what makes you unique. The fact that you feel so well and so deeply is what makes you such a special person. A lot of people don’t have that.”

Soon after Dr. Choi uttered that impressive statement, it was time for Felix to go. Felix left therapy feeling a lot better about himself. He was now ready to talk to Seungmin and start to sort out his feelings. 

It was later that day when Felix had a chance to talk to Seungmin alone. Seungmin had wanted to stay behind at the studio to practice his dance a little bit more and Felix volunteered to stay behind with him to help him perfect the tricky moves.

While they were stretching to warm up, Felix gathered his strength and took a deep breath before beginning to talk: “Hey Seungmin, when you said a couple of days ago that I was going to ‘grow horizontally’ if I kept eating so much, that hurt, so in the future could you please not comment on how much I’m eating?”

“Oh I’m so sorry! I definitely shouldn’t have said that, oh my gosh, what was I thinking? I was so proud of you for eating so well that day and that was such a horrible way to express my pleasure. I’m so sorry.” Seungmin hugged Felix and Felix fiercely returned the gesture.

“So,” Felix asked once they had broken apart, “Do you want to go get dinner?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it's definitely not Sunday, but we've already established that once I finish a chapter I just impulsively post it, so here you go. I don't know if this fic will be updated on Sunday since I'm updating today, but if I don't update this one I will update Comfort in the Stars, so there will be an update from me on Sunday. Also, this chapter is so long and more focused on Felix, so I hope you enjoyed it! I just realized there's probably only going to be three more chapters, so this is almost over!! Have a good rest of your week! I'm so jealous of you if you currently don't have school because of snow days!
> 
> As always, comments are greatly appreciated!


	21. Chapter 21

It took Jisung longer to warm up to his therapist than it did for Felix. At first, the only reason Jisung kept coming back was her dog: Gom. For a while, Gom was the only part of therapy Jisung looked forward to. 

Jisung didn’t like talking about his feelings, especially with strangers. The whole thing just felt very awkward and out of place to him, but slowly, Jisung began to warm up to Dr. Kim and soon he found himself feeling more comfortable with sharing his emotions and thoughts with her. He even did as she suggested and started a journal to help him keep his thoughts organized and to help him cope. He actually found the journal quite helpful, especially during sessions when he wanted to recap how he was feeling in a particular moment.

Now, therapy didn’t stop Jisung’s anxiety, or even make his panic attacks happen less often. Instead, it gave him ways to calm down quicker when he was worked up or feeling anxious about something.

In one of their first meetings, Jisung and Dr. Kim had practiced a variety of breathing exercises. Jisung had received a small stack of cards with different breathing exercises listed on them, and in their session they went through and practiced each one. There were cards as simple as taking deep, belly breathes and as complicated as taking a big breath, as if you were mimicking a lion, followed by a smaller “mouse” breath.

Jisung’d used his breathing exercises many times, but he remembered the time that he discovered the most effective one for him more vividly:

Jisung was in the studio by himself trying to compose a new song for their next album; however, it wasn’t going very well. He just couldn’t seem to get the beat right for the bridge. He had been working on this one small section for almost half and hour and Jisung was starting to feel helpless and hopeless. He was so useless, couldn’t even do one simple thing to better a song. How stupid could he possibly be? 

Jisung’s chest started to ache and he started to snap his fingers, trying to feel  _ something _ . He felt so uncomfortable in his own skin; he couldn’t breathe; his thoughts were running rampant; his hands were shaking so hard that they could no longer hit the computer keys with any degree of accuracy. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. Every sound was amplified. Jisung could no longer deal with the clicking of the keys, the squeaking of his rolly chair, the low hum of the air conditioning. He was going to die. His hands were shaking and his chest was aching and he was going to die.

Wait, Jisung halted his train of thought. He knew what this was: a panic attack. Armed with this new information, he grabbed his notecards with the breathing exercises listed on them and started to do the first one he saw: taking a deep breathe from his stomach in on a count of 6, holding it for 4, and exhaling for a count 8.

Gradually, his heart rate began to slow down and he had control over his body and mine once again. He still felt shaky, still felt off, but he was no longer in full panic mode. The breathing exercises had helped. However, Jisung didn’t feel like working anymore. Instead, he packed up his stuff and headed over to the studio where Chan was working, wanting the reassuring comfort his leader brought. 

When Jisung entered the room, Chan looked up at him, his face quickly changing form pleased to worried when he saw the look on Jisung’s face. “Oh, Jisung, are you okay? What happened?”

“Stuff,” Jisung answered, falling into Chan’s outstretched arms, relishing his comforting touch, losing himself in the hug.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Later, I just need this now.”

Jisung felt Chan nod in response and pull him in a little tighter. 

That night,, Chan walked with Jisung back to the dorm and let him sleep next to him in his bed, not wanting to let the younger out of his sight when he was so visibly upset and shaken from his recent panic attack. 

 

Later Jisung talked to Dr. Kim about his panic attack in the studio and she smiled proudly when he said that he used his breathing exercises to help calm himself down, “That’s great Jisung! I’m so happy that you were able to recognize what was happening and take action to help alleviate your anxiety. Also I’m happy that afterwards you sought someone out for additional support, that shows incredible bravery to let someone see you when you feel so vulnerable.”

Jisung nodded and awkwardly shifted in his seat; he didn’t feel very brave, just weak and helpless. He hated that he was this way, hated that he even had to go to Chan for assistance. He knew it was unrealistic, but Jisung just wanted to get better, to stop always feeling so anxious, so helpless, so needy. He felt like he was such a burden.

“Now,” Dr. Kim broke him out of his train of thought. “At any point did you have any thoughts of cutting? You mentioned that in the past you usually used that to help yourself cope with your anxiety.”

Jisung pondered the question before answering: “No, I don’t think I did…”

Dr. Kim wrote something down. “That’s good. Now, do you want to go over some grounding techniques? These can help you while you’re dissociating or having a panic attack.”

“More cards?”

“More cards.”

 

Jisung actually really like the grounding techniques, more so than the breathing ones. There were things like listing objects you saw, felt, heard; focusing on the texture of something; going through the alphabet and listing something that started with each letter; and his personal favorite: crossing his arms over his chest and rhymically tapping each shoulder. Jisung was naturally a very fidgety person and this particular exercise played perfectly into his preexisting tendencies. Not only that, but it was easy to remember.

He would usually use this particular technique when he was doing studio work or an interview or in a break from dancing. While dancing it was easiest to focus on the sensations of his body--the way his clothes felt on his skin, his feet on the ground, etc. It was kind of hard to tap your shoulders while doing completely different choreography.

 

Soon, a month had passed since Jisung had started therapy. In that time they’d had their comeback and were now starting to promote “I am YOU”. While Jisung’s anxiety didn’t get better, it wasn’t so completely life consuming. He was now more capable of identifying when he was having a panic attack, when his thoughts were going down a dangerous road, and could usually help to mitigate his anxiety before it got too bad. In fact, Jisung had made it through all of their pre-recording for their comeback without a hitch. Of course he was incredibly nervous about performing, but beforehand he would glue himself to his members’ sides and use every single breathing and grounding exercise he knew. Jisung felt like things were starting to look up for the first time in a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I have been writing so much lately! We're going to pretend that today is Sunday, okay? I decided to just write and post this shorter chapter now to give myself some time to write the next chapter, which will definitely be A LOT longer than this measly 1200 words. We're finally wrapping up this fic soon and I'm actually really looking forward to the next chapter, although writing it will be tough (you'll see why next week).
> 
> I hope that you have a great weekend and that those of you in cold places stay inside and stay warm, and enjoyed your couple of days off from school. Please let me know what you thought of this chapter in the comments!


	22. Chapter 22

 

Jisung wasn’t quite sure exactly when things started to go downhill; it started off slowly at first: a panic attack before dance practice, stressing too much about their upcoming promoting, lack of appetite, hands shaking.

He supposed that the main catalyst for what happened was their “I am YOU” performance at MNET. It was one of their first stages since their album came out and Jisung was especially nervous that day. He had only had a yogurt for breakfast that morning and completely forgot to eat lunch; everyone had been too busy preparing for their stage to remind him to eat like they usually did. Instead, Jisung kept on practicing through lunch time and didn’t even realize he had skipped the meal until later that night. 

The car ride over to the venue had been tense, everyone silently going over the song and the choreography in their head, Chan and Woojin monitoring one of their dance practices, taking notes on the parts that they needed to focus on during the performance. No one had really been talking and that’s when it really started: the anxiety. Jisung had just been sitting there, looking out the window, when a sudden, familiar tightness appeared in his chest and his hands started to shake.  

_ No,  _ he had thought,  _ Don’t do this now, calm down, don’t be this way, you’re fine, stop being so dramatic. _

Him scolding himself didn’t help, only served to further the growing feeling of dread and anticipation in his stomach. Jisung felt as if he was going to die, as if he was going to fall apart and combust. He started to go through every breathing exercise that he knew, started to try and focus on the feeling of the seat beneath him, the texture of his jeans, but nothing seemed to help. His anxiety only grew. Jisung desperately wanted to be able to calm down, hated himself for feeling this way, but he just couldn’t regain control over his emotions. He desperately wanted to reach out and curl himself around Minho, to take comfort in the touch, but Minho looked too busy for him, reviewing the choreography on his phone, and Jisung didn’t want to bother him, didn’t want to be snapped at by the older. So, he just sat there, turned up his music, and tried to focus on anything except the gnawing anxiety in his chest.

 When they arrived at the venue, Jisung wasn’t feeling any better. Every sound felt like it was going to make his head explode, he just couldn’t deal with anything. 

Their manager was giving them instructions, but Jisung couldn’t focus on his words. Every sound hurt, physically hurt. Minho breathing beside him, the sound of feet pounding against the tile floor as someone walked past, the air conditioner humming in the background, the door behind them slamming shut, it was all too loud. He couldn’t deal with it. He couldn't deal with it. He couldn’t deal with it. It was all to much. 

Jisung just wanted to scream out in frustration, voice his internal struggle. But he couldn’t. The sound of his own voice grated against his ears like nothing else; the words got stuck in his throat and just couldn’t force them out. He was stuck in his own body, trapped in his own head, a slave to his anxiety.

He mutely followed his members to their allocated space to get ready and didn’t speak as he had his hair styled and got dressed into his clothes for the performance. Then, he just sat there silently as everyone else got ready, his earbuds plugged in as he tried to lose himself in the music. Eventually, Jeongin came to sit by his side and held out his game to Jisung. It was set to a two-player mode and the sound was off. They traded off the phone several times as they played, Jeongin beating him badly. 

By the time they had to go up to perform, Jisung was feeling a lot calmer. The anxiety was still there, ready to bubble back up to the surface at  moment’s notice, but it was manageable. Every sound no longer pained him and his heart no longer felt as if it was ready to jump out of his chest. As the music started, Jisung lost himself in the dance, rap flowing easily from his lips. The well-practiced moves flowed from his body and Jisung felt more relaxed than he had in a long time. That was, until, he took an awkwardly placed step and slipped on the slick stage. His voice cracked, he was delayed in finding his next spot. He fell apart.

The rest of the song was spent endlessly worrying about every move, every word that came out of his mouth. There ended up being no more mistakes, but Jisung was terrified that he would mess up again, become an even bigger failure. He had let everyone down, the fans probably hated him, thought him talentless. He couldn’t even do one simple thing right. 

As soon as Jisung was backstage and out of the view of the fans, he burst into tears. His anxiety was back full force. He felt like he was going to die. His heart was going to burst out of his ribcage, he was going to puke up his guts, he was never going to be able to catch his breath ever again. Jisung’s legs buckled from under him and he curled up into a ball a shaking, crying mess. His mind was running a million miles a minute. His members could find him any second, what if they saw him here such a mess, he was awful, horrible, he couldn’t do anything right, his mind was racing out of control, why couldn’t he control himself, he felt as if the writer of his story had forgotten punctuation and now he had to read on without stopping. He couldn’t breathe.  _ He couldn’t breathe _ . His chest hurt. He was going to die here, alone, backstage, a complete and utter failure.

“I found him! Jisung, Jisung, can you hear me?” Jisung felt Chan kneel next to him. “Hey, Jisung you need to breathe, alright? Can you do that for me?”

Didn’t Chan understand? He couldn't breathe, he just couldn’t, he couldn’t control himself, he was going to die.   

“Jisung, is it okay if I touch you? It’s not good for you to be curled up like this; it’s why you can’t breathe,” Hyunjin was there now, kneeling on the other side of him.

Jisung let out a shaky nod as he sobbed and gasped for air. 

“Okay, I’m just going to help you sit up.” Steady arms pulled at Jisung’s shoulders and lifted him up into a sitting position, leaning him back into Hyunjin’s lap. “Now, feel my breaths and breathe with me. Ready? In for one...two...three...four…and out for eight.” Hyunjin and Chan both demonstrated how Jisung should be breathing, while holding him close, trying to make him feel as safe and protected as possible.    

Jisung began to mimic them and gradually his heart rate slowed as his panic attack subsided.  

When he was finally feeling calm enough, Jisung reached out to tightly hug Chan and Hyunjin back. “I’m sorry. I messed up during the dance and then this. I’m so worthless.”

Chan pulled back to look Jisung in the eye: “No, you’re not. You barely even stumbled during the dance and that wasn’t even your fault, the stage was way too slippery. Also, you can’t control how you feel, we found you in the end and that’s all that matters.”

Jisung nodded in reply, too tired and mentally drained to protest. 

Chan and Hyunjin helped him clamber to his feet, shaky legs barely supporting his weight, and they walked back to their allocated space. When they arrived, the rest of the members jumped to their feet and enveloped Jidung in a huge group hug. “Are you okay?” “Feeling better?” “I was so worried” “Don’t worry, you’ll be okay” “You’re doing good, don’t let your brain tell you any differently” 

Jisung nodded in response to the cacophony of supporting voice that surrounded him, “It’s okay guys, I’m feeling better now.”

Slowly everyone began to break off and gave Jisung his space, “Just please tell us next time, we can help you,” Woojin pleaded.

“Sorry,” Jisung looked at his feet, “I didn’t want to bother anyone.”

“But, you’re never a bother!” Minho was outraged at Jisung’s words. “Never say that about yourself!”

Jisung nodded, eyes still focused on his feet. Luckily, just then the manager called everyone over and told them to take off their makeup and change because they’d be leaving soon. “Don’t forget that we have practice tomorrow morning to monitor your performance just now and to work on our vocal stability while dancing.” 

Everyone nodded and headed to go do as they were told. Just as Jisung was about to head over to change the manager called after him: “Hey, Jisung! Can I talk to you for a second?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Jisung flinched, positive he was about to get scolded, but turned around to face their manager anyways. 

“Are you feeling okay?” the older man asked, surprising Jisung by how caring he sounded, “Your performance really was great, everyone slips from time to time, it’s nothing to worry about. Just, in the future when you’re having a panic attack, could you try to let someone know and not hide yourself away in a corner? You’re not in trouble or anything, I just want to make sure that you’re safe in the future. I promise I will never judge you for your anxiety. Today was a success even if you think differently. You managed to perform perfectly despite your mind working against you.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks, I’ll try not to run away again.” Jisung mumbled before quickly scurrying off to get changed, not wanting to continue the awkward conversation for any longer.

A while later, Jisung was back at home, Minho holding his hand comfortably tight. “What do you want for dinner?” he asked, I’m sure everyone will eat whatever you want.”

“Oh, I’m really not that hungry,” Jisung said with a yawn, “I just want to go to bed, you know how I lose my appetite when I’m anxious.”

Everyone nodded understandingly and wished Jisung a good night as he headed to his room. It was when he was on sleep’s doorstep that Jisung realized that all he’d had to eat that day was his meager breakfast.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning was chaotic. Somehow alarms had been set for the wrong time, leaving everyone only ten minutes to get ready. There was a lot of screaming going on that morning and Jising had to practically run to get to practice on time. In all of the disarray, no one had remembered to eat breakfast.

Everyone was stretching when the first wave of dizziness hit Jisung. He had just stood up from doing some ground stretches and suddenly the whole world was spinning. Jisung shook his head and blinked a few times, willing the dizziness to go away. Once it fully subsided, Jisung just continued his stretching and wrote off the sudden wave of dizziness as nothing. It was probably just a simple headrush. 

As they went through their warm up, Jisung completely forgot his sudden faintness while stretching, focusing instead on making sure his body was well warmed up before he started. He couldn’t afford any injuries, especially right now. 

Soon, the music was starting and everyone was in their positions. Chan started to sing the opening verse and they were off. Jisung was determined to nail this practice, to show that yesterday was a fluke, that he could perform well. He flowed through the moves and his rap like a well-oiled machine, never faltering once. The music came to its end and everyone bent over in exhaustion. Jisung could feel his heart pounding throughout his body and he felt a tad more out of breath than usual, but it was nothing too concerning and he forgot all about it as their manager started to give them feedback: “Jeongin try to hold your arm up a little higher, the angle is slightly wrong during the chorus. Woojin, make you moves during the second verse slightly more separated and pronounced, right now they’re kind of flowing together too much. Jisung, that was really good. Now, let’s take it again from the top.”

Jisung beamed at the praise and joined everyone in the effort to restart the song as quickly as possible. But this time around, Jisung felt slightly off. His breathing was ragged and arms shaky.  He was lightheaded.

During the second verse, Jisung’s legs got tangled up in one another and he barely managed to catch himself before moving on, not too bothered by his mistake. It was during the dance break that the full extent of his condition hit him. He felt  _ awful _ . He could barely move his legs, his body felt sluggish, his head was pounding, the room spinning. Jisung barely managed to make it off to the side before his legs gave out and he found himself on his hands and knees, kneeling on the unforgiving floor. 

The music turned off. “Are you okay?” Felix was by his side in an instant, “What did you eat yesterday? Dang it, you didn’t eat dinner. Please tell me you had lunch.”

Jisung rolled onto his back and shook his head. Someone gasped--probably Seungmin.

“I’ll go grab a Gatorade,” Jeongin offered, basically sprinting out of the room.

“I’m getting snacks for everyone,” Woojin announced, “We all forgot to eat breakfast.”

“I’m okay guys, really.” Jisung tried to sit up, but was overtaken by another wave on dizziness. “Okay, so maybe that was a stretch.” he laughed at his statement, but no one else seemed to find it funny. They were all staring down at him looking incredibly worried. 

“Jisung, I swear to God, you are going to give me a heart attack one day.”

“Sorry, Chan.”

Their manager headed over, rubbing at his head as if he couldn’t believe the sight before him. “Please just stay laying down for now,” he sounded exasperated. Jisung supposed he hadn’t made their manager’s job the easiest in the world lately. 

Jeongin came bursting back into the room, panting, with a red Gatorade in his hand. “I got it,” he gasped out before handing the bottle to Felix who unscrewed the top before giving the bottle to Jisung. 

Jisung let out a small smile as the fruity coolness flooded his mouth, “Thanks Jeongin, you really are the best.”

Jeongin beamed at the praise, but then his face fell: “I wouldn’t have to bring you Gatorade if you would just take care of yourself.”

Dang, that hit Jisung hard. Wow, Jeongin sure was manipulative when he needed to be to get what he wanted.

Luckily, just then Woojin entered the room, arms overflowing with various snacks, preventing Jisung from having to look at Jeongin’s sad puppy eyes anymore. 

With Minho’s help, Jisung sat up against the mirror and began to munch on the snack handed to him. He still wasn’t feeling very hungry, but he knew that he needed to eat. Not only that, but even Felix was slowly chewing on the chips offered to him. Changbin had his arm wrapped around the Aussie and was distracting him by talking about some movie they had watched the other night, carefully keeping away from the topic of food. Through much trial and error, they had all learned that it was best not mention food while Felix was eating. It was most beneficial  to distract him as much as possible because otherwise he would freak out about the amount of food he had just consumed. 

Now, Jisung let out a warm smile at how much Felix had been eating recently. Sure, it still wasn’t nearly enough to be considered healthy, but Felix’s eating habits had vastly improved in the past month. It made Jisung feel so proud and happy looking at his band member who now was starting to look less pale and gaunt and more healthy. 

Jisung wished that he could feel the same way, wished that his improvement could be viewed so easily, wished that he could get better as fast as Felix was. But instead, everyday was a challenge for Jisung, everyday was a new struggle, a new fight. Felix seemed to be continually getter better, while Jisung had many ups and downs, both good and bad days. However, Jisung didn’t realize that Felix, too, had bad days. That for Felix some days eating felt impossible. Recovery is rarely linear, it always has its ups and downs and everyone moves at their own pace. 

 

Jisung ended up sitting out for the rest of dance practice. Even with the snacks and Gatorade, the manager still deemed him too shaky to join back in until after lunch, and by then they had moved on from dancing to vocal and rap lessons. 

For the rest of the day, Jisung felt slightly on edge. The anxiety in his chest never quite went away completely, but it never swelled into a panic attack either. It was just there. A constant reminder of Jisung’s helplessness, his inability to control his emotions.

That night it took Jisung longer than usual to fall asleep, his mind was racing, refusing to calm down. Thoughts kept spiraling through his head about his awful performance at MNET, his failure during dance practice, the way he had been bringing the team down lately. He honestly just wanted to cut, wanted the release the pain would give him, wanted a way to cope with his emotions, even if it was unhealthy. But, he had promised. Jisung ha promised he wouldn’t cut again without consulting someone about his feelings first and everyone else was asleep. Plus, it would be so much work to get down from his bed, go all the way to the bathroom, find some razors, take them apart, cut, then clean up all the blood, and hide the evidence. It really just wasn’t worth it that late at night. So, instead, Jiung just lay there on his bed for several hours until sleep finally laid her soft kiss upon his body. 

 

The next morning was dance practice, again. This time, Jisung made sure to eat plenty beforehand and was feeling a lot better than yesterday. 

The music started up and everyone rushed to their positions. Jisung let his body fall into its usual rhythm of moves, determined to prove to everyone that he could do better than the day before. 

The first song went smoothly, his body was feeling great and he nailed almost every move, dancing with as much power and emotion as he ever had. Even Chan commented on how well Jisung was doing and Minho complemented the sharpness of his movements, commenting that it was the best Jisung had danced in a while. 

When they started to dance to their next song, Jisung was beaming. He was feeling great and wanted to prove that he was better. He wanted to show to everyone that he wasn’t helpless, that yesterday was a fluke. He was going to dance perfectly today. 

The music started for “I am YOU” and Jisung stood in his position, nailing the timing for the beginning, making his arm movements as smooth as possible to contrast the sudden snapping up to a standing position. He was doing great: in sync with everyone, perfectly on beat, smooth when needed, sharp when called for. Jisung was working hard, sweating, heart beating quickly to keep up, but it was a good kind of hurt. The kind that meant you were getting better, improving. He loved that feeling.

Suddenly, Jisung thought about how he had felt yesterday. How weak his legs had been, how he had been panting for breath, how his heart can been straining against the confines of his chest. The steady beating of his heart and ache in his legs no longer felt good. They made him want to panic. It reminded him too much of how he had felt before he had fainted yesterday. He couldn’t faint again, he just couldn’t. But, his legs started to shake and he no longer could control his breathing.

Jisung’s legs collapsed once again and he broke down into tears of frustration while sitting on the floor of the practice room.

“What happened? Are you okay?” Woojin rushed over, starting to check out Jisung for injuries.

“Jisung, what’s wrong?” Chan knelt down next to him, but Jisung was too overcome with frustration and panic to answer his leader.

Why did he have to be this way? Why did his body have to betray him like this? Why was he so helpless? What was wrong with him?

Jisung just curled up into an even smaller ball and sobbed heart wrenchingly into his arms. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. It was too much. He was too worthless.

All of his members were flitting around the room worryingly. Jeongin had ran off to get the manager and Seungmin had volunteered himself to get a Gatorade. Everyone else was crouched around Jisung trying to coax him into talking, so they could figure out what was wrong, why he was crying.

“Jisung, what hurts?”

“Can you please just talk to me?”

“I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong,”

“Please Jisung, just say something. You’re really scaring me.”

But, Jisung couldn’t answer them. He was too far stuck in his head to talk, to think coherently. His thoughts were spinning around, a tangled mess. His chest hurt. His heart was going to explode. He was going to die. It was all too much for him to handle, for his body to handle and he was going to die right there, sitting on the floor of the practice room, unable to control his thoughts, his feelings, his actions. Everyone hated him. He was so useless, so helpless. It would be best if he just died. Everyone would be better off. 

 

Eventually, the panic in Jisung’s chest subsided and he uncurled his body to lay on the cold, hard floor, completely exhausted. By that time the manager had finally come in with Jeongin close on his heels. 

“Jisung, did you injure yourself?” 

Jisung shook his head and closed his eyes, not wanting to look at anyone's disappointed face. 

“Okay, that’s good. Did you eat breakfast?”

“Yeah,” Changbin answered for him, “he actually had more than usual. He ate with me and Felix.”

The manager nodded thoughtfully, trying to figure out what was wrong, “Hey, Jisung? Could you please try to tell me what’s wrong?”

Jisung didn’t want to talk. He was too mentally exhausted. He just wanted to be wrapped up in a big fluffy blanket and sleep for at least 10 hours. So, instead of answering, he just shook his head and drew his knees even closer to his chest, tears starting to leak out of his eyes once again.

“Hey,” Hyunjin’s soft voice spoke from beside him, “Are you having a panic attack?”

Jisung didn’t answer.

“Can I hug you? Would that help?”

Jsung slowly nodded. That actually sounded amazing. All Jisung wanted in that moment was Hyunjin’s strong arms wrapping around him, making his feel comforted, at home.

When Hyunjin knelt next to Jisung and cautiously wrapped his arms around his body, Jisung unraveled himself and clung to Hyunjin like a koala. He relished the feeling of human contact, slowed his breathing to match Hyunjin’s, let himself relax into the embrace. Soon, all the members were crowded around the two, offering Jisung as much comfort through skinship as they could. 

“You doing okay Jisung?” Hyunjin muttered into his hair.

Jisung just shook his head in response and leaned further into Hyunjin’s embrace. 

Everyone around them cooed, “Oh, Jisung it’s okay.”

“Honey, you’re doing so well.”

“I’m so proud of you.”

“We’re always here for you no matter what.”

 

Eventually, the panic and pain in Jisung’s chest subsided enough that he could talk. He gently pulled away from the giant group hug, but still stayed close enough to Hyunjin and Minho that he was touching their shoulders and holding their hands.

“Sorry about that guys, I just, dancing, and--”

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to explain we understand,” Chan soothed the visibly upset Jisung, “You can’t control these types of things.”

“We’re going to call off dance practice for the rest of today.” Their manager announced. “You guys should go get something to eat, then we’ll have a combination of English, Japanese, and vocal lessons in the afternoon. I think that will be most beneficial to you all right now. We can pick back up with practice tomorrow.”

“Okay,” the chorussed, leading Jisung out the door and up to cafeteria. 

Everyone was talking excitedly, but Jisung couldn’t help but feel that he let the team down. It was because of him that dance practice had been cancelled for the rest of the day and he hadn’t gotten in a properly lengthed practice for two days now. He was letting making everyone move slower for him. He was a failure.

Felix noticed the sad look on Jisung’s face: “Hey, it’s not your fault. You don’t get to control it. And I for one am happy for a break.”

“Yeah,” Changbin chimed in, “I needed to work on my English anyways.”

“Your dancing is fine, Jisung. It’s okay if you miss practice for a couple of days. Your mental health is more important.” Minho said.

“Thanks guys,” Jisung still wasn’t feeling the best about himself, though. Hyunjin must have caught onto to Jisungs mood because for the rest of the day he was glued to his side along with Jeongin, Felix, or Minho, constantly cracking jokes, tempting smiles out of Jisung. That night Jisung went to sleep curled up with several other members feeling, slightly better about himself despite his break down that morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to Jeongin!!
> 
> This chapter is the longest that I've ever written, but it still didn't accomplish everything that I wanted too. I guess that I was a little too ambitious. Plus, I wanted to end this chapter on a good note since there was so much pain and angst in it lol. Also, I guess I'm just completely ignoring the updating schedule that I had going because you know...this is me we're talking about. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and please leave comments because I love reading them!!


	23. Chapter 23

The next morning they had to wake up at the crack of dawn. Practice started early that day, followed by filming for a vlive in the afternoon, and later on promoting their song at yet another venue. 

Jisung was determined to do better, feel better than yesterday. He ate a well balanced breakfast, listened to calming music on the walk over, and talked with Seungmin and Jeongin, effectively keeping his brain busy thinking about things that weren’t his anxiety. It seemed to work. While stretching Jisung didn’t have a single whisper of nervousness in his chest. In fact, he wasn’t even thinking about his mental illness, instead joking around Seungmin and threatening to tickle the younger when he got too close. 

Soon, Chan was calling the start of their practice and everyone was laughing good-naturedly as they got into their positions. Chan set up the camera to monitor their practice, and then they began.

The first run went smoothly and once they were done they all crowded around the computer screen and watched their dance, Chan and Minho making comments about who was half a beat behind where and whose arm wasn’t at the exact right angle. Then, they ran it again, and again, each time stopping to look at the recording to perfect their dance, get the timing down exactly right. 

At around the fourth time running through the dance, Jisung started to feel tired. The aching in his legs reminded him of when he’d felt faint. His heart was beating fast. He was breathing hard. That wasn’t good. What if he had a panic attack? What if he fainted again? This would be the third day in a row. He couldn’t let everyone down like that. 

Jisung’s hands started to shake, but he ignored it and kept on going through the motions of the dance. He was going to finish this practice no matter what. He was not going to give up again, not going to be so extremely weak for yet another day. So he did. He finished the dance despite the shaking of his body, despite the weakness of his legs. However, as soon as the last note played, Woojin turned around to look Jisung straight in the eye. “Go sit down. You’re taking a break.”

“No, but--”

“This is non negotiable. Either you take a break or I go get the manger and you’re done for today.”

Jisung rolled his eyes at Woojin’s ridiculousness. He was  _ fine _ . It didn’t matter that there were black spots in his vision and the room was slightly off kilter. He didn’t need to take a break. 

As he walked over to the corner, Chan sent him a sympathetic smile.  _ I’m sorry _ , he mouthed. Out of everyone Chan definitely knew the most about Woojin’s overprotectiveness. Once, Woojin had marched over to the studio to literally drag Chan back to the dorm kicking and screaming. He had also practically tied Chan down to his bed when he was sick and still wanted to go to practice with everyone else. Jisung was pretty sure that day Woojin had resorted to slipping sleeping pills into their leader’s orange juice. 

A Gatorade was thrust into Jisung’s hands. He looked up and saw Jeongin smiling at him. “I have a stash in my bag now for you and Felix. It saves me the trip.”

A wave of remorse ran through Jisung’s body at those words. He hated that he had been so useless and weak lately that Jeongin had resorted to carrying around Gatorades for him.

“You should probably sit down. Woojin looks about ready to yell at you.” 

Sure enough, Woojin was glaring at Jisung from across the room, gaze easing when the rapper slowly sank to the ground, sipping on his fruity drink. 

“Hey Jisung! You’re in charge at yelling at us if our timing’s off,” Minho shouted from across the room as he started up the music once more. His silly words made Jisung smile as he began to watch the dance with his eagle eyes, yelling out when someone was off of the beat or  had a slightly wrong angle. 

“Thanks Jisung!” Minho ran over to high-five him once the music had come to its end, “You’re really quite invaluable.”

Jisung didn’t feel valuable. Minho was only saying that to make Jisung to feel better about himself. In reality he was a good-for-nothing failure. He couldn’t even last a full dance practice for heaven’s sake!

“Jisung! Sit back down! You’re definitely still shaking.”

“Woojin,” Jisung whined as he retreated back to his corner, “But I’m feeling perfectly fine.”

“Just for one more run through, then you can join back in. We just don’t want you to be too exhausted for the promotion later tonight.” Changbin was trying to play he mediator, coming up with a compromise that both Jisung and Woojin reluctantly agreed to. 

Jisung grumpily sat through the next run through, glaring at Woojin the whole time. Once they finished, Jisung jumped to his feet, ready to dance alongside of them. However, Chan chose that moment to call a break and Woojin shot Jisung a grin before running to grab everyone snacks. 

“It’s not fair,” Jisung whined as Felix sat down next to him, “I just want to dance with everyone else, I feel fine.”

“They’re just doing what’s best for you. You really scared us the past few days and they don’t want you to hurt yourself. Remember when I wasn’t allowed to dance because my weight dropped too low?”

“Yeah, but that was different. It was unsafe for you to be dancing.”

Felix raised an eyebrow, “Oh, and it’s totally fine for you to be dancing right now?”

Jisung huffed and looked away from his friend’s pointful stare. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Felix rested his head on Jisung’s shoulder, forcing him to pay attention to what he was saying, “It’s okay, no one blames for having to sit out every once in a while. It’s more important that you take care of yourself.”

“Mm-hm,” Jisung responded unbelievingly. He needed to improve his dancing, keep practicing. Otherwise, he’d lag behind everyone else, become an eyesore during concerts. 

Felix looked like he was about to say more to Jisung, but just then Woojin came back with the snacks and Jisung took advantage of the momentary chaos to slip away from Felix and sit with Seungmin and Jeongin--the masters of distraction. He chatted animatedly with the two, munching on the snacks, ignoring the pointed stares from the other members, and quickly rushed to his spot once the music started up again, effectively avoiding everyone else. 

Before he knew it, practice was over and they were heading upstairs to begin their planned Vlive. 

Jisung always enjoyed Vlives, relished the chance to connect with Stay. In front of the camera he always made sure to put on his usual mask of crazy, crackheadedness and teased the members as much as possible--especially Minho. It was worth it, even though he usually had to go sprinting away the minute the live was turned off. 

This time, however, Jisung just wasn’t quite feeling it. After what had happened during practice he felt stuck in his own head, unable to break out of the barrier of his own thoughts. Every movement took monumental effort and more times than not, Jisung found himself sitting there stiffly like a statue, staring off into space. His brain was twisting itself into knots, running off without him. Jisung could just sit there, numbly, desperately fighting and losing the war that was raging inside his head. His just wanted to break through the fog that was clouding his movements, wanted to be able to interact with the world, but he just couldn’t. His limbs felt cemented in place. Jisung was tired. Too tired to muster up the monumental effort that it would take to force his limbs to move. So, instead, he just sat there, trying his best to force a smile on his face as the others screamed and messed around on either side of him. 

Hyunjin, as perceptive as ever, noticed Jisung’s demeanor and glued himself to is side, speaking enough for the both of them. Seungmin even joined in with the effort and helped to pull Jisung out of shell by joking around with him and prompting him to tease the others, the two of them calling Chan and Minho informally a couple of times, but instead of the usual wild joy the risk brought him, Jisung’s heart felt iced over. His smiles never quite reached his eyes, never quite warmed his heart. 

The minute the live was turned off, Minho turned around to yell at Jisung for his disrespect--Seungmin had already taken off with wild laughter. However, Minho’s harsh words stopped in his throat when he saw the look in Jisung’s face.

“Jisung, are you okay?” His question prompted the others to turn around and look at Jisung, worried. 

Jisung didn’t answer Minho’s question, instead opting to mess with the frayed fabric of his jeans.

“Jisung, what’s wrong?” Chan had now turned around and was scanning Jisung’s face for any sign of what was bothering him. 

In response, Jisung just shrugged, burying his head into Hyunjin’s jacket. He just wanted to be left alone He didn’t want to talk about how his heart felt as if it was missing from his chest, as if he was just one empty cavernous black hole. He was lifeless, a block of ice. He couldn’t feel anything.

He heard Woojin sigh, “We’ll talk about this later, okay? Right now we need to get lunch.”

Jisung slowly nodded and clambered to his feet, falling behind everyone else as they made the trek upstairs. His leg’s felt exhausted at the short climb, and he was me out of breath than normal, but Jisung wrote it off as nothing. Seungmin was found already sitting at a table upstairs and he let out a big smile at the sight of Jisung, beckoning him over to sit with him, “Come here! I got your favorite!”

When Jisung slid into the seat across from Seungmin, the younger leaned over to whisper in his ear, “Thank you, you’re my protection. No one will bother me with you over here.”

Internally, Jisung rolled his eyes and scoffed at the ridiculousness of the vocalist, but was too mentally drained to actually voice his disgust, instead opting to poke at the food on his plate. 

Soon, the others came over, and Minho, upon spotting Seungmin, put down his plate, and pounced on the younger.

“No, no, stop!” Seungmin shrieked as Minho mercilessly tickled him, “I surrender! I’m sorry!”

Finally, Minho slowly backed away, “Only because Chan was about to yell about us making a scene.”

Sure enough, almost everyone in the cafeteria had turned to look at them--not that it was anything new. They were always drawing attention in the JYP building, it was hard not to when your group had 9 rambunctious members. 

Today however, Jisung hated the attention. He just wanted to sink into his chair, become invisible. He was having a bad day, a horrible day. A horrible week, in fact. He just wanted to go back to the dorm and curl up in a ball and go to sleep forever. He just needed a break, a break from this busy schedule, a break from from his mind, a break from life. 

“Jisung, you sure you’re good?” Hyunjin looked worried, concerned written in his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jisung looked down at the uneaten food on his plate, “I’m just not hungry.”

“Okay, whatever you say.” 

Hyunjin obviously didn’t believe Jisung, but chose not to argue with him, instead quietly sitting down next to him and digging into his own lunch. Jeongin, who was seated on the other side of Jisung and had observed the whole exchange, lifted his chopsticks laden with food up to Jisung’s mouth, urging him to take a bite. “Please, for me? Just one bite?”

Jisung rolled his eyes, but relented to their youngest’s pestering and accepted the offered bite. Once the food was in his mouth, he didn’t miss the mischievous smile that Jeongin shot Hyunjin. 

“That was mean, using Jeongin to do your dirty work.”

“Oh, but it worked.” Hyunjin had a triumphant grin on his face, unabashed by his manipulative ways.

“Whatever,” Jisung rolled his eyes and went back to obstinately pushing his food around on his plate without actually taking a bite. He wasn’t hungry. He ate yesterday and this morning, missing one meal wouldn’t hurt him too much. He’d just eat later. 

 

Right after lunch they left to go to the venue where they’d be promoting their song. It was a decent spot with their space sectioned off by temporary partitions. Felix was the first to get his hair and makeup done and while they were waiting Woojin appeared out of nowhere and forced a sandwich into Jisung’s hands.

“You’re eating all of this before we go on.”

“Okay mom,” Jisung muttered sarcastically.

“I will not hesitate to tell the manager that you didn’t eat lunch.”

Jisung dramatically took a big bite of his sandwich.

“Thank you.”

Jisung rolled his eyes, but took another bite.

About halfway through his sandwich, a wild Minho appeared on his lap, with the SKZ Talker. “Jisung, say hi to Talker!”

“Let me eat in peace.”

“You made Talker upset. You hurt his feelings.” Minho pouted.

“And would you look at that. It’s time for me to get my hair and makeup done.” Jisung stood up, dumping Minho off his lap and headed over to the stylists, shaking off the sudden dizziness that overcame him with the action. It was probably nothing to be worried about. Anyways, he had just eaten a sandwich, he’d be fine by the time that they performed.

Sure enough, Jisung was feeling better by the time they went up on stage, having completely forgotten about his earlier dizzy spell. Jisung was pumped up and ready to perform. His earlier panic attack was a distant memory as he was only slightly affected by some stage nerves, not plagued by anxiety. 

The song started out smoothly and Jisung lost himself completely in the music. However, halfway through he started to feel dizzy and a little nauseous. The pounding of his feet and sharp movements, only further aggravated his sudden ailment and Jisung found himself desperately trying to stumble through the choreography to get to the end. He was almost there. He could do it. Just a few more seconds. One more turn. Stand there, over there. Get the timing right. Wait, and now!

Jisung bowed with the other members and hurried off stage, collapsing the minute he was out of the audience’s eyes.  

Everyone was by his side in a second.

“Jisung, are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“Please talk to me,”

Jisung could only shake his head as sweat poured out of his body and he began to gag. Pretty soon, the contents of Jisung’s stomach were on the floor and Chan and Changbin were pulling him to his feet, supporting his limp form as they walked him over to where Stray Kids’ allocated space was.

Their manager was by Jisung’s side in a second, “Are you okay? What happened?”

“He collapsed right after finishing the song,” Chan answered for him.

“I-I’m fine,” Jisung choked out, curling up into himself as a sharp pain shot through his chest, “I’ll b-be okay. I j-just need to rest.” Jisung tried to sit up, but his vision went black at the sudden movement.

“No, stay still,” Woojin urged, “You don’t want to make anything worse.”

“I’m calling an ambulance.” their manager announced, “You need to go to a hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Jisung croaked out, weakly lifting up his arm in a hopeless effort to stop the manger from making the call. He didn’t want to go to the hospital. He’d be fine. These things happened sometimes. He just needed to close his eyes for a second...to take a quick rest…

“Jisung! Jisung! Stay awake! Stay with me!” Jisung’s eyes slowly fluttered open. Why was Minho yelling like that? He was fine. There was nothing wrong with him. 

Another sharp pain shot through Jisung’s chest and he suddenly found it incredibly hard to breathe. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t take in any air.

He could faintly hear his members yelling something above him as everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, the next (and final!!) chapter should be up soon-ish. 
> 
> But, in the meantime you should follow my Instagram that I impulsively decided to make tonight!! @intricate_6  
> Feel welcome to DM me complaining about that cliffhanger or just to fangirl/boy with me over various kpop groups! Anyways, I should probably go to sleep now because I have to be at practice in like 4 hours!!


	24. Chapter 24

Jisung had only been out for 30 seconds, but was so disoriented when he came back to consciousness that he didn’t even protest as he was loaded up into the ambulance. His mind was spinning, spiraling. He was falling down a deep hole, he couldn’t breathe. He just needed everything to stop for a second, he needed to press pause on the world. 

But the world kept on spinning, taking Jisung on its wild ride. 

 

The hospital was chaos. People were running around in white coats, pushing beds down the hall. There was a constant flurry of activity that Jisung’s overwhelmed mid was struggling to take in. 

He was taken to a blank room with white walls and white sheets with a smiling woman in a white coat who drew his blood and inserted his IV, cheerfully chattering away, asking his what happened, how he felt.

Jisung answered in monosyllabic words, wanting to be left alone. He had a horrible headache and all he wanted to do was sleep. The world was too loud, the white walls too bright, his mind too restless. He just needed to be left alone. His chest hurt, lungs ached, heart pounded. Jisung just wanted,  _ needed _ , everything to stop. It was too much, he was too sick, too much of a mess to function. He was going to die laying here in the white hospitable bed. His heart was going to stop beating, his brain was going to implode, his lungs were going to quit inflating. He was too sick, it hurt too much, this was the end, he was going to die. 

The heart monitor started to beep like crazy. Jisung couldn’t breathe, couldn’t focus on what the nurse was saying to him. He was panicking. He was going to die. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. Everything was too loud. He faintly noticed a nurse inject something into his IV before a soothing calm spread through his limbs and everything faded into darkness. 

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Jisung’s eyes cracked open his hospital room was crowded. All of his members were crammed into the small space, sprawled out on the floor, lounging on the couch, leaning against the walls, being their normal rambunctious selves. 

“Jisung!” Jeongin was the first to notice he was awake and launch his body across the room into Jisung’s lap. Everyone else was quick to follow.

“How are you feeling?” Chan asked after he had finished squeezing Jisung so tightly in a hug that he couldn’t breathe. 

“Tired,” Jisung muttered, “dizzy.”

“I bet,” Woojin said, “you really scared us there.”

“Sorry,”

“It’s okay, hopefully they’ll figure out what’s wrong and you be back to practicing in no time.”

“Yeah,”

Jisung snuggled deeper into the pile that was on top of him, grateful for the support and love from the rest of Stray Kids. He didn’t know where he’d be without them.

All too soon a nurse entered the room, announcing that it was time for Jisung’s EKG. Slowly, all of the members crawled off his bed, looking disappointed. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.” Jisung promised as he followed the nurse out of the room. 

A few steps out of the door, a sudden wave of dizziness overtook him and Jisung almost fell over, the nurse grabbing his arm to steady him just in time. “Careful.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Jisung let out a nervous laugh as he let the nurse continue to tightly grasp his arm as they walked down the hallway.

 

The EKG itself actually went pretty quickly and wasn’t too bad. The most uncomfortable part was the cold goo the electrodes were stuck to and how many he had to find and pry off afterwards. The nurse promised him that he would get his lab and EKG results back later that day, before leading him back to his room where his members were waiting for him. 

“How’d it go?” Minho was by his side the instant Jisung entered the room.

“It was fine, nothing spectacular.” Jisung collapsed onto the hard hospital bed, his eyesight going blurry for a moment, and his head starting to che something fierce. “I should get the results back later today.”

“That’s good,” Chan said, sitting on the side of the hospital bed, slowly stroking Jisung’s hair. “You should try and get some rest. You’re exhausted.”

“Yeah,” Jisung muttered, his eyes drifted closed, and before he fell asleep, he felt the bed shift as several more people clambered on, curling up by his side. With a small smile, Jisung drifted off into the soothing blackness. 

 

The next time Jisung awoke, it was to the doctor walking in, clipboard in hand. “WE just got the results from your labs and EKG back,” he announced, “Do you want t on be alone in the room, or do you want your friends to stay?”

“They can stay,” Jisung announced, lacing his hand with Felix’s, “This involves them too.”

“Okay, well, all of your labs were perfect and your heart is working perfectly. Not only that, but your physical checkup was astounding. You’re perfectly healthy. What was causing all of the symptoms was in fact your anxiety.”

At those words Jisung’s world stopped. He was making this all up. It was all in his head. He was a fake, a phony. He was doing this just for the attention; nothing was actually wrong with him. His head was so screwed up he was making himself sick. Actually, physically sick. He was so screwed up he didn’t even realize it.

The doctor continued to drone on about Jisung’s mental health and how he should start medicine for his anxiety and how he should cope with this in the future, but Jisung barely heard anything he was saying. He was too caught up in his own head, too stuck up in the fact that he was making himself sick and it was all in his head. 

Before he knew it, Jisung was being signed out of the hospital, their manager clutching a bag with his prescription in his hand. Stray Kids kept trying to engage Jisung in conversation about how he felt and what he was feeling, but he expertly avoided the topic, directing the conversation to music instead. 

“Hey, Jisung,” their manager said once they had returned back to the dorms.

“Yeah?” Jisung turned back around to look his manager in the eye.

“You don’t have to go to practice tomorrow if you don’t want to. This doesn’t change the fact that you’re not feeling well, it doesn’t matter that it’s mental illness; it’s still as serious as a physical disease.”

It’s okay,” Jisung said with a smile, “I’m feeling better already, plus I want to go to practice tomorrow.” He didn’t want to be a burden anymore, didn’t want his stupid brain to drag down the team any more. He could get over this. He had to.

“Okay, if you feel up to it.” The manager handed him the bag with his pills in it. “The doctor said to start your first dose tonight.”

With a nod Jisung headed up to their dorm.

As always, the Stray Kids dorm was a kind of controlled chaos. Minho and Seungmin were at it again, chasing each other around yelling about a stolen movie. Woojin and Chan were busy making dinner with Felix’s unhelpful assistance. That left Changbin, Hyunjin, and Jeongin to curl up on the couch next to Jisung, offering to watch whatever show he wanted. Jisung was grateful for their kindness, but was tired of everyone treating him like he was about to break. He wasn’t even really sick, he was just making it all up in his head. He was such a failure that he couldn’t even control his own thoughts and feelings, couldn’t even distinguish when it was his own brain making him sick.

That night Jisung went straight to bed after eating dinner and taking his pills. He wanted to get plenty of sleep so that he was perfect tomorrow. He’d get a ton of sleep and be wide awake and amazing during practice. He’d show everyone that he was fine, that he was fully recovered, that anxiety wasn’t going to rule his life; however, his brain had different ideas.

Jisung woke up the next morning a nervous wreck. His mind was running a mile a minute and he couldn’t think clearly. He wasn’t going to give in, though, he wasn't going to take another day off. He was stronger than that. He wasn't going to fall prey to his messed up mind yet another time. He could do this. 

Jisung dragged himself out of bed and forced his legs to carry himself to the kitchen. His hands were shaking and all he wanted to do was lay down in his bed and go back to sleep, but he couldn’t do that, he just had to power through. 

Jisung ate breakfast, sitting at the table, numbly shoveling tasteless food into his mouth, but he did it. All of the food on his plate was gone. Next, was the bathroom. Jisung threw on whatever clothes he grabbed first, ignoring the scratchy feeling on his skin. He just wanted to take his clothes off and get back into his comfortable pyjamas, but he couldn’t. He had to be strong. 

He robotically washed his face, brushed his hair, barely even looking in the mirror before he was back in his room, sitting on the floor staring at his shoes. He couldn’t pick a pair; he was crippled by indecision. He didn’t want to move. It was too much effort. He just wanted to sit there forever. It would be easier. He wouldn't have to deal with the pains of the world, of reality; he could just sit there in his own little bubble, untouchable.

But then, Chan was calling for them to leave and Jisung had to haul himself to his feet and stumble out the door, following everyone to the JYP building. His heart was pounding, chest was aching. He felt dizzy, anxious, out of breathe. Things were going downhill fast. He was going to have a panic attack; he was going to make himself sick again; he was-

Jisung violently shook his head, breaking out of his harmful train of thought. He was fine. He was going to be fine. Practice would be fine. Everything was going to be fine. 

It wasn't fine, though. Jisung felt like he was dying. The world was ending. He couldn’t do this. It was too much. It was all too much. 

Somehow, Jisung made it to the practice room. He made it inside, was able to sit down, act like normal, stretch with everyone else, pretend that his mind wasn't destroying itself from the inside out. He was fine. He was going to be fine. 

Before he knew it, Jisung was dancing. His body was doing the movement that his mind couldn’t comprehend. He focused on the feeling of his body as it glided across the floor. How his arms felt as they moved, how his legs supported his weight. It was working. Jisung was feeling great. He completely lost himself in the dance, started to feel okay for the first time in a while. Then, he made the mistake of focusing on his heartbeat. It was fast. It didn’t matter to his brain that the reason for his accelerated heart rate was because of his dancing, no, his brain instantly equated his heart beating quickly with a panic attack.

Jisung began to panic. He couldn’t have a panic attack, he was doing so good, he had to make it through this practice. However, his body had different ideas and before he knew it, Jisung was a shaking, anxious mess. He felt dizzy, his chest hurt, he couldn’t do, he couldn't do it, he couldn’t do it. The world spun. His legs couldn't support him. He was dying, falling apart, shattering into a million pieces. 

Then, he was on the floor, curled up into a ball. He couldn’t do it. The music stopped. He heard voices above him, “Jisung, are you okay?” “Jisung, you need to breathe,” “Can you do that for us?” “You got this” “You’ll be okay”

He wasn't okay, he couldn’t do this. He was a mess.

“Jisung, you need to calm down.”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t calm down. He couldn’t.

“It’s okay, you got this. Just breathe for me, ready? Match my breaths. You can do it. You got this.”

Jisung tried his best, he really did, but it was just so hard. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t focus enough. He was going to be an anxious wreck for the rest of his life. There was no end to this never ending cycle of insanity.

But, a body can’t be anxious forever, and Jisung gradually came down from his panic attack, leaving him a sobbing mess on the floor. Then, Minho was helping his up, and whispering in his ear, and helping him home, saying something about ho the others still needed to learn the choreography for something, but he already had it down and Jisung needed to rest. Jisung just nodded along and let himself be led back to the dorms, and into his bed.

“Are you okay?” Minho soothing rubbed Jisung’s back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Jisung turned over in his bed, purposely hiding his face from Minho.

“Okay, I guess not. I’ll be in my room if you need me, okay?”

Jisung didn’t respond, feigning sleep. He heard Minho sigh, and slowly walk out of the room, softly closing the door behind him.

As soon as Minho was gone, Jisung clambered out of his bed and searched for his secret razor stash, hidden behind his underwear where no one would ever look. As soon as he unearthed the blades, Jisung began to cut. He cut line after bloody line into his hips, relishing the calm that the pain brought. It was what he deserved for being such a failure. It was his punishment for his weakness. The blood streaming down his legs brought him a twisted sense of calm. He finally felt free, calm, put together. For once, Jisung felt like a whole person. 

He cut the last line into his skin and looked down at what he had done. Instead of feeling proud, he felt awful. His hips were awful, bloody messes. It hurt. He was going to have scars for the rest of his life. It wasn’t worth it.

It wasn’t worth it. The temporary relief the pain brought wasn’t worth the scars, the pain it brought his friends. Because cutting didn’t only affect Jisung, it affected those around him, too. They looked at his hips and saw their own failure, saw how they failed to protect him from himself. It hurt them more than it hurt himself. 

Jisung started to cry. It wasn’t worth it. He needed to try, to actually try and get better. Not just for himself, but for everyone around him too. He needed to admit when he needed help, needed to commit to his therapy sessions, needed to practice all the techniques he was taught, needed to stop his negative thoughts. He needed to start now. “Minho! I need your help!”

 

The next few days were the hardest. Jisung had to slowly work himself out of the hole he had dug. He had gotten in so far, that he didn’t even realize overtime what was anxiety and what wasn’t. The meds helped though, for the first time in a while Jisung started to feel okay again. That isn’t to say they fixed everything. Jisung still had bad days. He still had bad weeks. He still had panic attacks. He even ended up cutting several more times when it got bad again. But, slowly, over time, Jisung started to feel a little bit more like himself. It wasn’t a smooth, quick, or total transformation, but it happened, eventually. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well guys, it's over! I really hope that I ended it well and portrayed that recovery isn't easy, or quick, or linear. It's hard.
> 
> Also, I would like to thank everyone who's read this and a special thanks for anyone who's ever left a comment! Your comments honestly make my day!!
> 
> Finally, please tell me if there are any mistakes. This is hella unedited as it is currently 3:30 am and I am regretting my life decisions.
> 
> And, please follow me on Instagram @intricate_6 I don't bite, I promise! Also, if you like my writing check out my other fic, Comfort in the Stars!!

**Author's Note:**

> Follow my newly-made Instagram @intricate_6!! You can DM me anytime to talk about anything! I would love to freak out with you about various kpop groups and stuff!!


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